Le vendredi 06 octobre 2006 à 09:46 -0400, Timothy Miller a écrit : > Actually, I'm rethinking this a bit. There are three licenses I see > providing with _certain_ OGA components (video, memory, PCI, SPI, > etc.): > > - Via GPL -- you can use it on your own design, as long as you conform to GPL > - Single-use commercial -- when you buy N OGA boards, you get N > individual commercial licenses to use those IP blocks however you > want, irregardless of the GPL. > - Full commercial -- You pay a license fee and can use those blocks > anywhere in any design, without concern for the GPL. > > This kinda nullifies my original statement: Given these term, we're > explicitly permitting someone to reprogram only the 4000, leaving the > PCI controller intact and reselling it commercially... because > effectively, they're reselling OGD1 boards as another product and > conforming to the single-use commercial license for the IP that comes > with it. > Concerning hardware licensing one should may be start from the tangible level to the abstraction level, i.e from the card or the device to the cores logic. Hence, the OGD1 boards would be entirely under GPL only, on the contrary, the cores logic alone could be licensed differently. Thus, one can't modify the board, even partially, without compelling to the GPL. If one can't or doesn't want to compelle, there is no other choice than to pay a commercial license of the board, even if one doesn't need the related cores. It's all or nothing. Concerning cores logic, it should be a matter of choice between an aggregation (e.g one exploit the PCI controller as it is) or a modification (e.g one reuse the PCI controller's code in an other code) and in this latter case one should have the choice between a GPL license or a commercial one. Concerning an ASIC one could do the same distinguo as for the board : the ASIC involves its RTL under the terms of the GPL, otherwise one gets the RTL under a commercial license.
Beside that, documentations and specifications matter. Don't know if the GPL covers this point explicitly. Moreover, if one considers a device with a mix of opened and closed componments the whole documentation of this device wouldn't be assymetric if the use of an opened compomnent doesn't involve the manufacturer to document this use with the closed componments. Sure, in most case, this manufacturer couldn't do that. _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
