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You reject the GPL saying that no company will accept it,

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: cores-bounces@o... [mailto:cores-bounces@o...]
Namens Víctor López
Verzonden: donderdag 6 januari 2005 21:42
Aan: cores@o...
Onderwerp: [oc] License

> You reject the GPL saying that no company will accept it,
>And I have to agree.
> but 
> propose a new license that does not allow commercial use?

Philipp, I am just saying what I would like and that is two licenses: A
general one for cores anybody could use (commercially) and another one
for non-profit research and educational purposes. The second one is not
a good idea? maybe, I just said what I would like, I did not say I did
not want cores to be used in commercial projects, indeed it would be the
first the one everybody would use, but the second (educational and
research =
non-profit) would maybe open a new scope of cores from enterprises (not
me) who could then contribute code knowing that it wouldn't harm their
business.

>a GPL like: so everybody can use and improve etc... And the most 
>important reason ... keep 'open hardware development' going on. and a 
>LGPL like: the original author can make the 'core' for some purpose 
>available under an other more restrictive license in which the user is 
>not obligated to contribute
his >own written parts.

Patrick, I dont understand what you mean with those two HW GPL like
licenses. Do you mean that with the GPL license, the HW vendor that uses
the core is required to publish his propietary parts of the chip?? 

No, because this will slow down the open core development.
Only modifications on the used core could be donated back, if e.g. the
modification or improvement is accepted by the 'original' author. 

Indeed, in your description, both the GPL and LGPL allow open hardware
development go on. I think we can't just expect that companies using our
cores will contribute in any way to them! the code they make is
propietary, it would only be ok to demand that changes to the core they
got from us should be made available thru the same license the core was
published. Is that what you mean with GPL? 

Yes.

I personally don't think that enterprises will want to contribute to our
effort, we can expect in justice only that our copyright note and
disclaimer be in their products, stating that a part of their product
has been made from an open core from author Xxxxx.

Fine, but some lawyuers from big companies don't like GPL.
There is not yet an clear jurisprudiction and lawyers (read:companies)
like more clear licensing especially for hardware.
GPL, LGPL, BSD are introduced in the software world.

I agree with Richard Herveille and Rudolf Usselmann in that modified BSD
is a good starting point as a LGPL kind of HW license that would fit us.

I have the same opinion, but give it an other name e.g. 'OCL'.

Regards,

Patrick

             Víctor López

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