AMD isn't giving away free stuff. They are selling FPGA hardware. But further, the free stuff has a lot of restrictions around it which practically gear it only for university usage. And the reason they do that is they want to have new graduates have experience with their software so they can demand it from their future employers.
replyBasic Vivado is the bare minimum to develop for their hardware. A large amount of functionality is still locked away behind paid IP.
replyMost of the revenue comes from the IP cores.
A common business model for companies like this is to enable developers to learn their tools cheaply, so that when they develop something for their employer, they're more likely to reach for those tools/ecosystems and have the employer pay for those tools.
This just cuts out beginner/hobbyist FPGA devs from using industry standard tooling.
It’s still free on Windows. Your argument doesn’t have legs to walk on.
replyEven more than that, they still have to maintain the software to work on Linux, because they have a paid on Linux.
replySo if they have to keep maintaining it and offer the basic tier for free on Linux... just why? It doesn't make any sense to me.
Maybe they receive "too many" bug reports from Linux users?
And not because Linux is more buggy but because Linux is populated with people that tend to know how to make bug reports ?
replyYou need to buy their hardware to use it. In fact there is no way to use most of their hardware without Vivado. So it's more like they are blocking you from using things you've already paid for
replyThe software is useless without their chips and the chips cost a fortune. It's not "business model no longer supports giving away free stuff". It's just bean-counters cutting corners.
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