On 10/22/2013 10:07 AM, Jeff Epler wrote: > The "IgH EtherCAT Master for Linux" page contains a notice that "Using > the EtherCAT technology and brand is only permitted in compliance with > the industrial property and similar rights of Beckhoff Automation GmbH", > which are additional restrictions compared to the GPLv2 which requires > the that the use of the software is not encumbered (GPL section 0, > "[t]he act of running the Program is not restricted"). > > As a result, I do not believe linuxcnc.org can ship binary software that > links to "IgH EtheCAT Master for Linux" because these use restrictions > are additional terms that "contradict the conditions of this License > [GPL-2]" (GPL section 7, "If [...] for any other reason [...] conditions > are imposed on you ([...] by agreement [...]) that contradict the > conditions of this License [...] you may not distribute the Program at > all.")
Wow. FAQ for Beckhoff's EtherCAT licenses: http://www.ethercat.org/en/faq.html#787 The bit that raises the red flag for me is in 3.1, "EtherCAT implementations have to be compatible, and nobody may change the technology in a way that prevents others to use it." If this applies to master implementations (it seems they're mainly interested in controlling slave implementations), this restriction alone would be GPL-incompatible. > As a pure HAL driver, it is possible to ship them to be built separately > from LinuxCNC. (built using Makefile.modinc, since it's too complicated > for comp to handle) That way if someone else wants to ship the code in > source or binary form, linuxcnc.org does not have to worry about it. You mean it's possible to ship the driver sources in tarballs distributed by the LinuxCNC project? I think so. IIRC, Seb's buildbots build and test the source separately from .debs. The .deb pkg builds would need to disable the EtherCAT build, since the build results are 'distributed' from the buildbot web page. John ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ October Webinars: Code for Performance Free Intel webinars can help you accelerate application performance. Explore tips for MPI, OpenMP, advanced profiling, and more. Get the most from the latest Intel processors and coprocessors. See abstracts and register > http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=60135991&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Emc-developers mailing list Emc-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-developers
