OS Software licensing?

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pstemari
 
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OS Software licensing?

Post by pstemari »

Not strictly on topic, but any thoughts on appropriate licensing for firmware for open source microcontroller projects?

My initial plan was to just put CC-BY or CC-BY-SA on firmware along with everything else, but looking at the creativecommons.org FAQ they specifically advise against doing that. I'm thinking Apache, BSD, or MIT, but don't have any good sense of the relative merits. I suppose GPLv2 is an option, but I don't really feel a need for the copyleft provisions.

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lyndon
 
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Re: OS Software licensing?

Post by lyndon »

What are you trying to accomplish with the license? If you just want to share code and keep things open, I'd go with GPLv1

adafruit
 
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Re: OS Software licensing?

Post by adafruit »

for firmware for open source microcontroller projects gpl is a popular choice. We tend to go with MIT/BSD if its fully original code (of ours)

cheers,
adafruit

pstemari
 
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Re: OS Software licensing?

Post by pstemari »

After some consideration I think I'll go with MIT/X. Seems to be the clearest and avoids the problematic patent stuff.

And I see you amended your post while I was composing mine. ROFL.

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westfw
 
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Re: OS Software licensing?

Post by westfw »

It'll depend on how you feel about your SW making it into commercial non-open-source products. If you wish to allow that, then the GPL licenses (even LGPL) are particularly inappropriate for embedded microcontrollers. I like BSD, but I don't remember how it's different from MIT...

pstemari
 
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Re: OS Software licensing?

Post by pstemari »

westfw wrote: I like BSD, but I don't remember how it's different from MIT...
There's three flavors of BSD. I think the 2 clause version is equivalent to MIT, but longer. 3 & 4 clause versions have the advertising and credit listing requirements.

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