On Thursday 30 October 2008 08:48:42 Rutger Hofman wrote:
> [I CC: this to the eCos list, because the licensing issue is frequently
> raised there, too. --R]
>
> Charles Manning wrote:
> > On Sunday 26 October 2008 01:36:26 Emmanuel Blot wrote:
> >>> Sounds great, thanks! (Or if you have no time to clean it up, I'll be
> >>> glad to see it anyway.)
> >>
> >> Here it is:
> >> http://moaningmarmot.blogspot.com/2008/10/yaffs2-for-ecos.html
> >
> > Hello all.
> >
> > I am very pleased to see an eCos port, but I would like to raise the
> > licensing issue.
> >
> > eCos is released under the eCos license which has some similarities to
> > GPL, but has an important exception, that you may also link in
> > proprietary "application code".
>
> [snip]
>
> > YAFFS GPL licensing does not provide this exception
> >
> > YAFFS is released under GPL or is available under alternate licensing
> > from Aleph One.
>
> [snip]
>
> > If I have misunderstood something, then please help to clarify.
>
> Of course I can only speak for myself, but I wanted to be license-aware
> in my approach. My intention is the following:
>
> 1) make a wrapper layer between the eCos file system package and YAFFS
> 2) make a wrapper layer between YAFFS and the eCos NAND Flash package
>
> both based solely on published API information by YAFFS.
>
> As far as I understand, these two wrapper layers would probably not be
> GPL'd, in the sense that they do not copy any YAFFS code. When I am done
> writing, these two wrapper layers are fed back to eCos. They can be GPL
> + eCos exception, if my reasoning above is OK.
That makes sense since that also allows people to springboard from your code
without dragging the GPL commitments along.
I would suggest though that you change the header in the wrapper file
(yaffs2/src/yaffs2.c) to what you want it to be (ie. eCos, not GPL).
I see you have attributed the wrapper file to myself. While I would be very
proud to be the father of this code, I am not. The correct person needs to
get the kudos for this effort.
>
> If users want to use YAFFS on eCos, they separately download the YAFFS
> code from Aleph One, and compile the direct/ stuff to be included in
> their eCos application. It is most certainly not my intention to feed
> any GPL'd YAFFS code to eCos -- the eCos people won't hear of it, for
> starters.
>
> If the users' project is GPL, fine. If their project is not GPL, then
> they will need to approach Aleph One for a commercial licence. In short,
> they will follow the YAFFS model. (For the record: our project is GPL.)
>
> Is this approach satisfactory?
Yes. I think you are on the right track here (except for the two minor points
mentioned above).
It might be worth adding a README to reflect this.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rutger Hofman
> VU Amsterdam
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