Re: [Emc-developers] EtherCAT - would not be a prob with free membership in EtherCAT Technology Group Re: LinuxCNC is in Debian!
Den 2022-03-02 kl. 20:56, skrev Nicklas SB Karlsson: Den 2022-03-01 kl. 22:06, skrev Jérémie Tarot: Le mar. 1 mars 2022 à 21:40, Bari a écrit : https://github.com/OpenEtherCATsociety/SOEM/blob/master/LICENSE I don't understand how the last sentences could be compatible with GPL? lhH EtherCat https://etherlab.org/en/ethercat/ I think is licensend under GPLv2 license. Master is implemented as kernel module and drivers are included in source code. Guess it should not be to hard to re implement to run as a real time thread and rename to Freecat. in lgH there is some local changes to the original drivers I guess come kernel, not sure why. I had some problem SOEM with more than three Ethercat devices, message never arrived back in the ring, adding a router and it did, not sure if might have something to do with this. Guess it is against answer myself. Anyway I found. Checking again it is possible to turn off building of Kernel modules in lgH so guess it should be rather simple to get into Linuxcnc. Normally an .esi file if I remember postfix correct is used then configuring file and ideally it should be possible to configure by using these files and add .hal pins. Bought Chinese IO modules, 16 bits in and 16 bits but for these are I more or less hardcoded position in Ethercat datagram. Nicklas Karlsson ___ Emc-developers mailing list Emc-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-developers
Re: [Emc-developers] EtherCAT - would not be a prob with free membership in EtherCAT Technology Group Re: LinuxCNC is in Debian!
Den 2022-03-01 kl. 22:06, skrev Jérémie Tarot: Le mar. 1 mars 2022 à 21:40, Bari a écrit : https://github.com/OpenEtherCATsociety/SOEM/blob/master/LICENSE I don't understand how the last sentences could be compatible with GPL? lhH EtherCat https://etherlab.org/en/ethercat/ I think is licensend under GPLv2 license. Master is implemented as kernel module and drivers are included in source code. Guess it should not be to hard to re implement to run as a real time thread and rename to Freecat. in lgH there is some local changes to the original drivers I guess come kernel, not sure why. I had some problem SOEM with more than three Ethercat devices, message never arrived back in the ring, adding a router and it did, not sure if might have something to do with this. Nicklas Karlsson ___ Emc-developers mailing list Emc-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-developers
Re: [Emc-developers] EtherCAT - would not be a prob with free membership in EtherCAT Technology Group Re: LinuxCNC is in Debian!
Den 2022-03-01 kl. 23:35, skrev Rod Webster: The reason why I put this on the agenda is that I observed that the debian project uncovered a number of licenses which we had to include in our copyright statement that deviated from the standard GPL licence. I was quite surprised at this. I would defer to Steffen on license issues and compatibility. For now I think we should make contact and make those assessments later. I propose to write requesting membership of the ETG with the following contacts Myself - admin contact Lead Developer - Nicklas Steffan - Licensing and the Debian Project. It is OK for me. Nicklas Karlsson ___ Emc-developers mailing list Emc-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-developers
Re: [Emc-developers] EtherCAT support
On 02.03.22 15:10, andy pugh wrote: On Wed, 2 Mar 2022 at 11:31, Arvid Brodin wrote: For full out-of-the-box EtherCAT support this package must be included in whichever distro(s) we use. I have no idea if this is possible This is currently fairly easy, as we run our own package server, and are already distributing debs for several other related projects (for example mesaflash, gtk-sourceview, glade-3: https://www.linuxcnc.org/dists/buster/base/binary-amd64/ ) I am not clear if a version of LinuxCNC installed from the Debian servers would have access to our private repository. I would expect not? We could do it like the skype package for Debian and just add that URL to /etc/apt/sources.d plus apt-key import with what you signed the repository. I do not really like that, though. Mesaflash is in Debian. Best, Steffen ___ Emc-developers mailing list Emc-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-developers
Re: [Emc-developers] EtherCAT support
On Wed, 2 Mar 2022 at 11:31, Arvid Brodin wrote: > For full out-of-the-box EtherCAT support this package must be included in > whichever distro(s) we use. I have no idea if this is possible This is currently fairly easy, as we run our own package server, and are already distributing debs for several other related projects (for example mesaflash, gtk-sourceview, glade-3: https://www.linuxcnc.org/dists/buster/base/binary-amd64/ ) I am not clear if a version of LinuxCNC installed from the Debian servers would have access to our private repository. I would expect not? -- atp "A motorcycle is a bicycle with a pandemonium attachment and is designed for the especial use of mechanical geniuses, daredevils and lunatics." — George Fitch, Atlanta Constitution Newspaper, 1912 ___ Emc-developers mailing list Emc-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-developers
Re: [Emc-developers] EtherCAT support
On 2022-03-01 18:14, andy pugh wrote: I am generally in favour of anything that makes LinuxCNC easier to use and more broadly applicable. So, I support bundling-in EtherCAT support, as long as we can be sure that nobody will be pointing their lawyers in our direction. However, one worry that we had in the past was that, whilst this organisation might be inside the Beckhoff "rules" if we join ETG, doing so might accidentally impose an unexpected (by them) licensing condition or restriction on our users. I don't know how real a worry that is. As I understand things: There are two basic parts needed for EtherCAT support: 1) Etherlab's ethercat master (https://gitlab.com/etherlab.org/ethercat). This software communicates with the ethernet layer and provides a programming api for EtherCAT communications, as well as a command line utility to interact with the bus. This software is completely independent from LinuxCNC. The code is licensed under GPLv2, but as can be seen on the linked gitlab site it has (unclear to me) restrictions on usage: "The license mentioned above concerns the source code only. Using the EtherCAT technology and brand is only permitted in compliance with the industrial property and similar rights of Beckhoff Automation GmbH." For full out-of-the-box EtherCAT support this package must be included in whichever distro(s) we use. I have no idea if this is possible (it would be up to debian to decide). Communicating with Etherlab/Beckhoff/ETG to figure this out is pretty far down on my list of things I want to do in relation to LinuxCNC, so I will not get involved in this. 2) Sascha Ittner's linuxcnc-ethercat driver. This is a HAL component that uses the Etherlab master api to let linuxcnc communicate with EtherCAT devices. It seems to be licensed under GPLv2. IMO it would be useful to make this a part of the linuxcnc codebase if the licenses are compatible. It could be enabled by e.g. './configure --enable-ethercat' (which would then check that the dependency Etherlab master is installed). Again, I have other things in my to-do queue but perhaps someone else is interested in doing this? IANAL but the only risk I see in including linuxcnc-ethercat is that Beckhoff might decide that we cannot use the term "ethercat", and we'd then have to rename all instances of that term to something else. But hopefully they'd help us to increase compliance/compatibility instead, if there was a problem! In addition, Dominik Braun's cia402 HAL component (https://github.com/dbraun1981/hal-cia402) is very useful for using EtherCAT drives and would be great to have as a standard HAL component. And I guess for full support there would also have to be some kind of configuration software to create the appropriate INI and HAL files. -- Arvid Brodin ___ Emc-developers mailing list Emc-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-developers
