Teensy 4.0 released

[Nominal Animal]

I made the first 1060/1064 designs almost 7 months ago, and there were UM and datasheets freely available on NXP site.

I glossed over the details, it seems.  See this message on the PJRC forum.

Essentially, the security manual was/is under NDA, but the datasheet and user manual were accessible from NXP if one registers there.  PJRC put the PDFs as freely downloadable from the PJRC.com site, but Paul notes that NXP may demand they take it down.

(No way in hell would I register at NXP for just the datasheet and/or manual for this chip, BTW.  The dev board isn't that impressive.  Remember, I am not a board developer, but a dev board user.)

Also the SDK has been around for longer than that I think ?

The SDK is useless to anyone not using NXP's hardware abstraction, especially if it has a no reverse-engineering clause (that is binding to PJRC, because of their agreements with NXP).  Remember, Teensyduino provides its own HAL for Arduino environment; the NXP SDK is not used.

Or are you seriously suggesting that us users should reverse-engineer their SDK instead of the chip manufacturer providing datasheets publicly, without registration/agreement?

[cgroen]

I made the first 1060/1064 designs almost 7 months ago, and there were UM and datasheets freely available on NXP site.

I glossed over the details, it seems.  See this message on the PJRC forum.

Essentially, the security manual was/is under NDA, but the datasheet and user manual were accessible from NXP if one registers there.  PJRC put the PDFs as freely downloadable from the PJRC.com site, but Paul notes that NXP may demand they take it down.

(No way in hell would I register at NXP for just the datasheet and/or manual for this chip, BTW.  The dev board isn't that impressive.  Remember, I am not a board developer, but a dev board user.)

Also the SDK has been around for longer than that I think ?

The SDK is useless to anyone not using NXP's hardware abstraction, especially if it has a no reverse-engineering clause (that is binding to PJRC, because of their agreements with NXP).  Remember, Teensyduino provides its own HAL for Arduino environment; the NXP SDK is not used.

Or are you seriously suggesting that us users should reverse-engineer their SDK instead of the chip manufacturer providing datasheets publicly, without registration/agreement?

Well, to be honest I don't remember I felt severely abused by registering on their site to get access to the datasheets/UMs, but then again, there are many other chips "out there" so enough to choose from.
For me personally (and the projects I work on) it did not have any catastrophic impact to register, something I was already as I use the forums on NXP already. (BTW, you also have to register to get their SDK, so no need to reverse engineer that one instead of registering for datasheets/UM )

[magic]

I sign up for that kind of things with fake name and a disposable email like guerillamail or mailinator.
Some companies block those so I find some more obscure disposable email service that isn't blocked, download what I want and leave them a support ticket to please unblock mailinator

[Nominal Animal]

Well, to be honest I don't remember I felt severely abused by registering on their site to get access to the datasheets/UMs, but then again, there are many other chips "out there" so enough to choose from.

I am not sure if I would either, if I was designing a circuit.

Having to register to NXP just to be able to program a development board using their processor chip, that I bought from some other company; nuh-uh.  That ain't going to fly.

I can understand registration for interactive tools like TI's webench, or EasyEda; I mean, I can provide my name and email address, but I won't provide my postal address as I really, REALLY don't want paper-based spam.  Dealing with email spam is annoying enough already (I got lots of active filters).  Requiring registration just for PDF datasheets and manuals seems suspicious to me, enough so that if I had had to register at NXP for the datasheet and manual, I suspect I might not have bought Teensy 4.0.

All that said, I believe it is just some marketing folks insisting they need to know everyone using their chip, so they can extract maximum value from their customer base.  Hopefully someone higher up understands that that attitude will hinder any entrance to the hobbyist/Arduino market ... but perhaps they don't care.  Perhaps the user information is more valuable to NXP.

[mac.6]

Registration is for some part of SDKs that are not under BSD-style license, so it requires you to "click and accept" those license if needed.

Does paper spam still exist? I barely got snail mail today and I run spamassassin...

[Bud]

Hell yes in Canada. 

[SiliconWizard]

Not much snail mail spam anymore these days, too expensive. You still get some in your mailboxes not mainly through mail, but directly from people distributing paper ads as very low-paid jobs...

It's annoying when there's too much, but I've grown not to bother (except that it may "hide" real mail when there's too much!)
I use all this paper as protection for paint jobs and workshop stuff in general. There's always a need for that, and it's free!

[langwadt]

I published an Open Source Hardware design and it was quickly put into production by a Chinese company. I've never had any contact with them, they must have found it on the web. I have no problem with them making money out of it, I never had any expectation of that. For me, the system worked, I created some IP which I Open Sourced, then commercial companies step in and make it available to everyone at a cheap price, without them "owning" the IP. In my book, everyone wins.

But did the company give you credit for the design? In my experience with various open-sourced designs picked up by Chinese manufacturers, they don't acknowledge the designer in any way.  If you (as the designer) get neither revenue nor recognition, I don't see how "everyone wins".

recognition could also back fire in people expecting support from the designer

related, http://wiringpi.com/wiringpi-deprecated/

[vk4ffab]

Registration is for some part of SDKs that are not under BSD-style license, so it requires you to "click and accept" those license if needed.

Does paper spam still exist? I barely got snail mail today and I run spamassassin...

For all those things I live at 2A George St, Brisbane City QLD 4000. That is the State Government parliament building. My real address, yeah bugger that.