I have been using OpenOCD quite alot recently on Olimex SAM7 boards using an Amotech tiny. I use Gentoo so keep OpenOCD upto date, using the ebuild which in turn uses git.
I have also used OpenOCD in the recent past for a LM3S6965 eval board without problems. But now it fails as below:Open On-Chip Debugger 0.5.0-dev-00565-g4617cd0 (2010-10-28-19:55)
Licensed under GNU GPL v2
For bug reports, read
http://openocd.berlios.de/doc/doxygen/bugs.html
Info : only one transport option; autoselect ‘jtag’
500 kHz
adapter_nsrst_delay: 500
srst_only separate srst_gates_jtag srst_open_drain
Info : clock speed 500 kHz
Info : JTAG tap: lm3s6965.cpu tap/device found: 0x3ba00477 (mfg: 0x23b, part: 0xba00, ver: 0x3)
Info : JTAG tap: lm3s6965.cpu tap/device found: 0x000000ff (mfg: 0x07f, part: 0x0000, ver: 0x0)
Warn : JTAG tap: lm3s6965.cpu UNEXPECTED: 0x000000ff (mfg: 0x07f, part: 0x0000, ver: 0x0)
Error: JTAG tap: lm3s6965.cpu expected 1 of 1: 0x0ba00477 (mfg: 0x23b, part: 0xba00, ver: 0x0)
Error: Trying to use configured scan chain anyway…
Error: lm3s6965.cpu: IR capture error; saw 0x0f not 0x01
Warn : Bypassing JTAG setup events due to errors
Warn : Invalid ACK 0x6 in JTAG-DP transaction
Polling target failed, GDB will be halted. Polling again in 100ms
Because it looks like communication errors, I also tried using the Amotech tiny (changing the config files to suit) but it fails in the same way.
I tried two LM3S eval boards also.
It was probably four or five moths ago since I used OpenOCD with the LM3S as I have been busy with the SAM7. The SAM7 and a STM32 both still work fine. Is there anything I have done wrong, or has something changed? There have been no complaints on the mailing llist.
Any help welcome.
Many thanks
Just tried on a laptop with 0.5.0-dev-00445-g1143bbc (2010-07-20-09:22) and it works o.k.
The Gentoo is a little older but I will update everything to same as the desktop to eliminate the os.
Copied the stellaris.cfg from working laptop to desktop openocd back in action for Stellaris. 
Will inform mailing list