I think the most important thing is to open
up the MPLAB ICD2 protocol (programming and debugging).
That is the single most important hindrant for dsPIC 
development under Linux.

To provide C30 buidling insturction (without the
close source optimizer) and packages will be another
good thing to do. To offer financial support to key
developers are also quite nice but I understand
that some of the developers may not want this kind of 
support. 

I think there are other things they can do better. I am
very satisfied with Microchip's support for my
projects in my work and I am not saying that Microchip
is doing quite badly in supporting the open source
community. As you said, they are quite good. I am 
very new to PIC development on Linux (my first two posts to
GNUPIC mailing list are about LPLAB testing on Linux
and MPLAB under Linux with Wine on May 26, 2005) and 
I think I've already have a working enviroment under Linux
similar to Windows with gputils/gpsim/sdcc/C18/C30.
That is quite good. However as Wouter and others have
said, Microchip can do better to foster the support of 
dsPICs (including dsPIC development on Linux).

I still do not have my ICD2 working under Linux even 
though PICkit 1 is working and hopefully PICkit 2 will
soon work under Linux as well.

Of course I am only a part-time Linux guy and I can always
boot back into Windows to have my ICD2 working if I mess up
my PICkit 2 and needs to reflash the flash. However there are 
people who do not have Windows.

Even if there are cheaper programmers which support dsPICs on
Linux and if people can extend the bootloader by Daniel Chia and
the Tiny Bootloader, still the debugging will be an issue.
So open up the ICD2 protocol will one thing they can help
a lot. That is kind of critical info, right? 
They can always keep the protocol/API close for the expensive
ICE2000/ICE4000. :)

Regards,
Xiaofan


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Byron A Jeff" <byron@cc.gatech.edu>
Newsgroups: gmane.comp.hardware.microcontrollers.pic
Sent: Saturday, August 27, 2005 9:05 PM
Subject: Re: [PIC] dsPIC for hobbyists

> 
> Support in what way? MPLAB is the flagship product. gputils
> already has most of its functionality. PicKits are supported
> with firmware and interface support. Programming specifications
> are available. They built the C30 compiler with GCC and have
> honored the GPL.
> 
> As a longtime Linux user and developer, I can attest that MChip
> has been infinitely more open about their developement tools and
> documentation than many others.
> 
> So I'm just trying to figure out what you think we need to ask
> of them? They've already done pretty much everything that a
> Linux community member would want, except for maybe an Open Source
> release of their libraries for the C30 dsPIC compiler. But
> then I'd ask what is it that's in the C30 libraries that hasn't
> in some form been duplicated in the SDCC or other Open Source
> C libraries? Do we really need a printf or scanf from Mchip?
> 
> I asking in all honesty. I think that Linux folks have gotten
> used to being self supporting and in fact understand that it's
> unreasonable to ask for the same level of development that
> Windows folks enjoy. The key is to have a company that doesn't
> inhibit Open Source development by withholding critical 
> information about a product or process. I have yet to see one
> instance where MChip has done that. Have you?
> 
> BAJ
> -- 
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