[Info-vax] Chinese Alpha?

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> wrote:

(snip)
> Doesn't the 8086 have special status that allows competitors to buid
> their own copies ?  Seems to me that this would be the way to go since
> China could export those chips to compete against Intel and ARM.

Last I remember, there were some second source agreements with AMD
in the 8086 days. (That is, 80x86 with x='').

There is always the patent vs. copyright issue. Remember, copyright
protects the expression of the idea. A clone could be a new
expression of an existing ISA. There could also be patents.
There is also the trademark on the name to consider.

I remember a story that the SPARC licence agreement requires one
to use a boldface font when writing SPARC. (My newsreader doesn't
have that option, though.) 

-- glen