Licensing:
You may be best to "Dual License" your board design:
Release one version under GPL. And keep a separate version for custom
licensing. Custom licensing is for manufacturers who don't want the GPL
(e.g. Somebody not wanting to contributing their board modifications back to
the community). You typically charge for custom licenses, and use this money
to continue development. This is becoming common and profitable in the Open
Source software industry (See Digium's Asterisk PBX software for an example
of dual licensing). You will need to get each GPLed board contributor to sign
a disclamer that allows their changes to be added to your custom licensed
board. You can find these agreements online.
As far as changing a product that has been released under GPL; you can only
branch a product, you can't remove it from GPL. If someone is in the middle
of using your product you can't change your mind and switch licensing on
them. You can however contact all the contributors and get them to sign an
agreement to branch a product with a new license. People are still free to
continue using the GPLed product before the branch. They can add to the old
GPLed product but you are not obliged to incorporate their contributions. For
an example of this read up about XFree86.
I don't see a problem with manufactures making money with your design. As long
as they contribute their changes back to the comunity they should be fine. It
is the design that is GPLed not the finished boards.
A GPLed design is very attractive to board customers. If Technologic Systems
produced this board then discontinued it, any other company could pick-up the
customers. Multiple sourcing is very important when convincing your manager
to use a design.
-Curtis.
P.S. While I'm at it, I'd like to recommend my SerialBlaster GPLed boot loader
for this project!!!
On May 5, 2006 11:11 pm, Dave Cramer wrote:
>
> On 5-May-06, at 10:19 PM, Mark Carlson wrote:
>
> > On 5/5/06, pickanameanditstakensoihavethis
> > <> wrote:
> >> well the licencing has been set to gnu gpl in order to cover the
> >> software , ip cores and hardware , but the hardware may have to
> >> change to a more bsd like licence as it looks like a gpl will
> >> prevent manufactuers form making a profit from manufactureing it,
> >> and as without profit it would not be worth making, that will need
> >> to be checked and changed to allow it, if it is the case
> >
> > Quick question:
> > I'm no licensing expert, but since you've already released the
> > hardware as GPL, don't you have to keep it that way now? (Derivative
> > works and such) Or am I incorrect? Is there a way to release it
> > under the BSD license now?
>
> The authors of the work can change it, as long as they agree upon the
> change.
> >
> > -Mark
> >
> >
> > ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------
> > ~-->
> > Everything you need is one click away. Make Yahoo! your home page
> > now.
> > http://us.click.yahoo.com/AHchtC/4FxNAA/yQLSAA/CFFolB/TM
> > --------------------------------------------------------------------
> > ~->
> >
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
Home is just a click away. Make Yahoo! your home page now.
http://us.click.yahoo.com/DHchtC/3FxNAA/yQLSAA/CFFolB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ts-7000/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
|