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Message
From: Günter Dannoritzer<dannoritzer@w...>
Date: Fri May 9 12:00:53 CEST 2008
Subject: [oc] How to sell an open core?
Víctor López wrote:
> I was wondering that with the LGPL license I am letting anybody make
> profit out of my cores as long as they leave my name in the author's
> field... would that permit the obscene situation in which an enterprise
> sells my core to other enterprise without even making any changes to
> it? Or am I wrong?
>
> I mean, acting as a devil's advocate, what if I take all the LGPL
> cores at OpenCores and sell them thru Xilinx's coregen program? I do
> know I can get them for free at opencores.org... but who else does? I'd
> like to know anybody's thoughts about this.
>
> Personally, I don't mind about other people making money by
> integrating my opencore in a bigger system (JPEG encoder core as a part
> of a digital camera, for instance), but I'd like to know who is using
> it, just for the sake of it. What license would make sense for that?
>
> Regards,
I am not a lawyer, but the way I understand GPL is that there are two
core requirements:
- if you extend a design that is covered by GPL, you need to set the new
design also under GPL.
- if you pass a GPL-based design to someone else, you need to provide
the source code as well.
For LGPL there is a separation between libraries and application code,
but I don't really know how that applies to HDL design, as here you
cannot really create a library in the same sense as with software
design. But maybe I am wrong here and e.g. a VHDL library can be seen
that way?
So to come back to those two core issues, they will allow you to sell a
GPL design, but you need to provide the source code to the Customer as well.
If I understand it right, that does not hinder you to make a special
contract with that Customer, forbidding him to pass that source code on
to any 3rd party.
Cheers,
Guenter
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