Re: [oc] RE: [pci] PCI core ( LICENSING )

[Johan Klockars <johan@klockars.net>]

> Licenses again huh. Seems a never ending story.

;-)

> Problem with the GPL style license are the terms 'linked' and 'derived work'.
> We all UNDERSTAND that somebody who uses an OpenCores core in a proprietary 
> project does NOT have to open their proprietary core. Problem is that in fact 

I would not say that there is such an understanding, since some of the
OpenCores projects are under licenses that do not say this.
Of course, it's possible that the people who put their cores under those
licenses did not understand what they were doing, but you can't assume
that.

> the OpenCores core and the proprietary cores are 'linked' together to form 
> one netlist. Someone then might argue that the entire project is a 'derived 
> work' from the OpenCores core and that the entire work needs to be opened. We 

It would be hard to argue against it, I would think.
That's what 'derived work' in the (L)GPL sense means.

> eCos faced the same problem. In eCos 2.0 they slightly modified the license 
> and disclaimer header (see below)
...
> Interresting here is the exception clause. This is exactly what we want. I 
> therefore suggest adding this exception clause to all cores using a GPL style 
> license.

To me it looked like that was a clarification regarding a header file
and not actual code, but I don't know the details of this.

If you do this kind of thing for actual code, it would nullify the
whole reason for the GPL, IMHO.
The idea is to preserve the freedom of the user, not to enable
anyone to use whatever code they want in proprietary software (or
hardware, in this case).

I'm not saying that making cores available that anyone can use, as long
as they contribute their improvements to the public, is a bad idea.
Just that it is not what the GPL is about and that, thus, trying to
base such a license on the GPL is not a good idea (if it's even
possible, which seems unlikely).

-- 
                        | Why are these |  e-mail:   johan@klockars.net
                        |  .signatures  |
                        | so hard to do |  WWW:      http://www.klockars.net
                        |     well?     |            (fVDI, MGIFv5, QLem)
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