Dear Sylvain Lamontagne, In message <[email protected]> you wrote: > > Ok, I am now in the seat of someone that could push the idea of > putting the next platform we develop into the mainline. But other > MBA/Finance/Manager persons that really take decisions will surely ask > my department why I would like to give internal informations of our > product in a way that any of our competitors could get it easily. How > could I give them an answer that would be aligned with the philosophy > ?
First, U-Boot is covered by the GPL, so you will have to give the full sources anyway to any of your customers who asks for it - even if it's one of your direct competitors. Second, do you really think there is any intellectual property in a port of U-Boot that is worth such protection? If so, you better write your own proprietary boot loader from scratch. Third: according to Ohloh (http://www.ohloh.net/p/u-boot) it would cost you (or your company) some 270+ man-years or $_15,000,000 to develop something like U-Boot from scratch. You got all this code completely for free, so it seems only just and equitable that you return the little you added to the community, too. > > I did not intend to be rude, but I have to admit that your attitude > > is not exactly in line how community projects like this work. > Then I'm sorry, but for me this project sounds like it is directed by > a bunch of elitist who would not accept someone that don't already > know how the project work. Criticizing and judging questions asked by > people that may never have work on or with something like U-Boot > before. If you are afraid of getting to much dumb questions then this > means that the documentation and the FAQ from the U-Boot website could > be improve in a way that new comers would find easily the informations > they need. All the documentation is in a wiki - please feel free to add any parts you consider missing. Wolfgang Denk -- DENX Software Engineering GmbH, MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: [email protected] People seldom know what they want until you give them what they ask for. _______________________________________________ U-Boot mailing list [email protected] http://lists.denx.de/mailman/listinfo/u-boot
