Legal status of eluaproject
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I see that most of the files in the lm3s port still say:
// The software is owned by LMI and/or its suppliers, and is protected under // applicable copyright laws. All rights are reserved. You may not combine // this software with "viral" open-source software in order to form a larger // program. Any use in violation of the foregoing restrictions may subject // the user to criminal sanctions under applicable laws, as well as to civil // liability for the breach of the terms and conditions of this license. I would guess that legally this is void until the "viral" term is tested in a court of law, but it doesn't sound like you can redistribute this under a MIT licence either. M _______________________________________________ eLua-dev mailing list [hidden email] https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/elua-dev |
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Hi,
On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 12:44 AM, Martin Guy <[hidden email]> wrote:
I see that most of the files in the lm3s port still say:
We had this problem with the first version(s) of eLua which were GPL. GPL is "viral" in the sense that it touches other code that is distributed together with GPL code.. Then we switched to MIT (mostly because of licenses such the one above). IANAL (NDIEWTBO) but the MIT license is as liberal as it gets:
I believe this lets us redistribute their code as long as we specify that parts of the eLua code are copyrighted under different terms (and of course we do that). I hope I'm not wrong about this one.
Best, Bogdan _______________________________________________ eLua-dev mailing list [hidden email] https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/elua-dev |
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The LMI copyright snippet provided below sounds like LMI wants to prevent linking with other source whose "viral" license forces its terms to apply to the LMI software as well. The MIT License does not do this. So (having no education in law) I opine that eLua is in the clear.
!!Dean On Mar 19, 2011, at 11:52 PM, Bogdan Marinescu wrote: Hi, _______________________________________________ eLua-dev mailing list [hidden email] https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/elua-dev |
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In reply to this post by BogdanM
On Sat, Mar 19, 2011 at 5:52 PM, Bogdan Marinescu
<[hidden email]> wrote: > Hi, > > On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 12:44 AM, Martin Guy <[hidden email]> wrote: >> >> I see that most of the files in the lm3s port still say: >> >> // The software is owned by LMI and/or its suppliers, and is protected >> under >> // applicable copyright laws. All rights are reserved. You may not >> combine >> // this software with "viral" open-source software in order to form a >> larger >> // program. Any use in violation of the foregoing restrictions may >> subject >> // the user to criminal sanctions under applicable laws, as well as to >> civil >> // liability for the breach of the terms and conditions of this license. >> >> I would guess that legally this is void until the "viral" term is >> tested in a court of law, but it doesn't sound like you can >> redistribute this under a MIT licence either. The viral component they're referring to is specifically targeted at the GPL, however there are some GPL-based projects that do include the LM3S drivers, including a high profile one like FreeRTOS, although they're fairly explicit that certain files that they redistribute are not covered by the GPL: http://www.freertos.org/license.txt We don't imply that we're changing the license terms of the manufacturer provided header files, although admittedly sine if the text on our site isn't quite as explicit was what's stated on the FreeRTOS licence, we do note this: "Manufacturer provided CPU support libraries are licensed under their own terms. Check src/platform/platform-name for details of each license." LM3S also has a requirement that their files not be reused on hardware other than their own and a few other limitations that make theirs one of the most complicated licenses associated with peripheral support and headers found among our supported platforms. They've had this license since before they got absorbed into TI, and I don't believe they've made any indication that they're planning to change it in the mean time, though I wish they would. > > We had this problem with the first version(s) of eLua which were GPL. GPL is > "viral" in the sense that it touches other code that is distributed together > with GPL code.. Then we switched to MIT (mostly because of licenses such the > one above). IANAL (NDIEWTBO) but the MIT license is as liberal as it gets: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License#License_terms > I believe this lets us redistribute their code as long as we specify that > parts of the eLua code are copyrighted under different terms (and of course > we do that). I hope I'm not wrong about this one. I don't think the licenses are incompatible so long as we don't replace their copyright, change their terms or attempt to relicense the files. The MIT license doesn't really care about that. The GPL, on the other hand, might not like being distributed with the LM3S license due to the GPL's "no additional restrictions" clause. So I think the LM3S license and the GPL are actually mutually incompatible without explicit modification. So, IANAL (NDIEWTBO either), but I generally think we're OK. If anything we could be perhaps more explicit in how we describe which files are under which license. Also, Luminary is quite aware of the project, has donated hardware to test on, and they've even mentioned eLua on their site and some of their dev kit packaging. > Best, > Bogdan > > _______________________________________________ > eLua-dev mailing list > [hidden email] > https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/elua-dev > > -- James Snyder Biomedical Engineering Northwestern University [hidden email] PGP: http://fanplastic.org/key.txt Phone: (847) 448-0386 _______________________________________________ eLua-dev mailing list [hidden email] https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/elua-dev |
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Hi,
On Sat, Mar 19, 2011 at 20:25, James Snyder <[hidden email]> wrote:
Thank you all for adding to this recurrent topic here on the list. Besides the previous Luminary Micro awareness, as mentioned by James, Texas Brazil have invited me to presentations and to be present at their official events in Brazil (ie: Texas Tech Day 2010). We have actually just been invited to be present again on their stand, on the first edition of the Embedded Software Conference BR, the Brazilian edition of the ESC Silicon Valley, to be held in São Paulo next May 24th and 25th. (where eLua will be present on other manufacturer's stands too). We may get some help from their lawyers, in case their HQ decides to sue us for some reason :) Best Dado
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