Am 04/06/2011 05:45 PM, schrieb Laurent Gauch: >> Hi! >> >> I'm currently working on a driver for the Keil ULINK adapter. >> >> I have developed a custom firmware for the ULINK's Cypress EZ-USB >> microcontroller during the last six months and recently began >> implementing the OpenOCD driver. Of course, I'd like to contribute both >> the driver and the custom firmware to OpenOCD. >> >> The firmware currently needs to be linked to the EZ-USB library >> available here: >> http://www.danielclemente.com/placa_pi/index.en.html#toc11 >> >> The library source code is a modified version of the original source >> from Keil, which does not contain any license information. >> >> Can these files be included in the OpenOCD repository or will I have to >> find a replacement that is compatible with the GPL license? >> >> Best regards, >> Martin > For the EZ-USB library it should not be a problem. The EZ-USB gives > access to USB but not to the ULINK interface. Right ? > > BUT the PROBLEM is to support ULINK interface protocol in OpenOCD, > since the ULINK protocol specification is not public, but copyrighted > by KEIL Inc.. He wrote that he has written his own firmware, so that would probably use a different protocol but just run on the ULINK hardware - that would be perfectly acceptable.
However, if his own firmware needs to be linked against a proprietary (which we must assume, since no license is given) library, the resulting firmware binary can not be included in/with OpenOCD. > I think we will never be able to include ULINK interface in OpenOCD. > Sorry. IANAL, but AFAIK, you can't copyright a protocol. So if someone were to reverse-engineer the ULINK protocol without using documentation obtained from Keil, and then a driver for that protocol is written without relying on documentation that is obtained from Keil, it should be perfectly legal to distribute the work. Note that this is based on European law, I don't know about other countries. The Samba project would be one precedent where this has been done successfully. However, if the ULINK is basically an EZ-USB chip which downloads its code via USB, using the ULINK protocol would also mean we would have to use Keil's firmware, as it needs to be downloaded every time the ULINK adapter is powered on. cu Michael _______________________________________________ Openocd-development mailing list [email protected] https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/openocd-development
