YOHDL stands for "Yes! Open Hardware Description License." In the hardware design world, it is the equivalent of open-source software. Now, let us first say what YOHDL is not. YOHDL is not a non-profit organization. In fact, YOHDL is not any type of ``Cathedral'' organization (in the tradition of the Cathedral and the Bazaar); in fact, it is most similar to the ``Bazaar,'' but even less organized. In the Bazaar framework, for example, as in the case of the development of Linux, there was one central ``maintainer'' (Linus Torvalds) who made decisions as to which bug fixes to include or not. The YOHDL framework is different: each HDL core, or variant thereof, has a voluntary maintainer.

For example, take the first YOHDL core, a DSP core. A graduate student at Carnegie-Mellon University is the maintainer. All versions of the DSP core have the YOHDL license (similar to the General Public License for software). Changes/bug fixes/versions are sent to and decided up by the CMU student.

Now, suppose you would like to radically change the DSP core, for example, by doubling the number of functional units and register files in the DSP. Then, you have two options: (1) return the new DSP to YOHDL via the YOHDL web site, without agreeing to maintain it, or (2) agree to maintain the new DSP core you've created. Then you become the equivalent of Linus Torvalds for your DSP core. At some point, your version may become quite stable, in which case you can opt for option (1) and remove the core from active maintainence.

In this way, we follow the Bazaar methodology, with one maintainer for each YOHDL core.

On May 3, Vincent Mooney and Herman Schmit had dinner in a Mexican restaurant in Atlanta, GA. They discussed an idea that each had independently been thinking about for some time: open IP cores.

By the end of dinner, the outline of YOHDL was established, including the name (coined by Herman Schmit).