Hello Greg and others, On Thursday 14 of September 2023 17:19:16 Gregory Nutt wrote: > On 9/14/2023 8:52 AM, Alan C. Assis wrote: > > I think the authors of the driver can release the source code using > > two or more licenses. > > cd c > > We already have an example of it in NuttX: SocketCAN > > > > Since they add the OR license clause it is fine. > > The part that bothers me is that I cannot tell which license applies to > the code from looking at the SPDX. If I am contemplating using NuttX, I > could not say which license is selected in this context. I suppose the > authoritative document is the SPDX specification, but this does not make > anything clear to me: > https://spdx.github.io/spdx-spec/v2-draft/SPDX-license-expressions/#d42-dis >junctive-or-operator. > > apps/LICENSE lists this license for canutils/candump, cansend, and > libcanutils, but does not clarify the OR condition. > > I would be hesitant to use the code in my project because of this doubt.
The problem is that if other license options are not included then we will be (in the fact) forced to setup independent developers for each target system and check that we have not mixed any substantial enhancements for which we do not negotiate Contributor License Agreement to inappropriate project. But yes, if it is required by NuttX, we do it that way and I will clone myself into different license domains virtually. We have rights to adjust licenses for code written by us even in the future anyway and it is quite probable that there are not so much external contributors or that they provide agreemet for porting into other open source kernels. But it complicates things in general. For sure, when there s OR in license, we cannot insist on keeping all variants anyway so there is no kind of guarantee that we do not get into this time wasting state as well. But broader licensing is simplification at least for the start and when generally cooperative attitude is on all sides then it is probable that it can stay that way. See SocketCAN https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/net/can/af_can.c?h=v6.6-rc2 which is favorable from Volkswagen to make its core reusable in another operating systems including NuttX for closed source projects when BSD is accepted. Best wishes, Pavel -- Pavel Pisa phone: +420 603531357 e-mail: p...@cmp.felk.cvut.cz Department of Control Engineering FEE CVUT Karlovo namesti 13, 121 35, Prague 2 university: http://control.fel.cvut.cz/ personal: http://cmp.felk.cvut.cz/~pisa company: https://pikron.com/ PiKRON s.r.o. Kankovskeho 1235, 182 00 Praha 8, Czech Republic projects: https://www.openhub.net/accounts/ppisa social: https://social.kernel.org/ppisa CAN related:http://canbus.pages.fel.cvut.cz/ RISC-V education: https://comparch.edu.cvut.cz/ Open Technologies Research Education and Exchange Services https://gitlab.fel.cvut.cz/otrees/org/-/wikis/home
