> BTW, did you know that RMS *does* consider the Verilog/VHDL that is > used to program an FPGA software? Hence, GPL *does* apply to > programmable hardware. > > > Perhaps it is time for a new license in the spirit of GPL, > > See http://www.tapr.org/ohl.html
>From the TAPR ohl, 1.6 This Agreement does not apply to software, firmware, or code loaded into programmable devices which may be used in conjunction with Documentation or Products. Such software is subject to the license terms established by its copyright holder(s). Any code is a written document which means it falls under licensing and copyright issues. TAPR is specifically aimed at hardware (they consider schematics, gerbers etc. to be "documentation" of the hardware and that forms part of the license). I've been doing some reading on GPL and BSD which has been quite interesting. The GPL people are typically against BSD style licenses (so-called copycentre), as described here, http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-copyleft.html. They also feel that the LGPL should be applied only to cases where there are equivalent proprietary libraries (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html). At the end of the day, it is really dependant on your intention. If you feel that everything based on, or linking to your code should be open, then use the GPL. Obviously, you can also dual license (remember you as the copyright holder can assign other licenses as you see fit). Alternatively if you want people to be able to use your code without open sourcing their own code, maybe the LGPL, or possibly some mild variation would be suitable. I'm not really too sure about the implications of the LGPL though, so beware before diving in. The kind of license that I would want to use if I wrote a reusable library for a uC would be something like this, 1) You can use and link the code into a bigger work without having to open source the combined work. 2) Modifications to the licensed part of the work must be release under the same license (i.e. improvements modifications etc. are contributed back to the community). _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user