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

[<cyrano@nerim.net>]

Richard Herveille <richard@asics.ws> a écrit :

> 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
> 
> 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
> 
> do not want that, but we should make sure that it is not up to a judge to 
> decide what to do. Therefore we need to clarify this in the 
> license/disclaimer header.
> 
> eCos faced the same problem. In eCos 2.0 they slightly modified the license 
> and disclaimer header (see below)
> 

This is almost the same trick use by Linux kernel to use proprietary modules.

It's even simpler in HDL to declare on which interface, the licence could be what ever you want.

Maybe one more exception should be use to enable the use of special macrocells dedicated to the technology (compiled SRAM,...). But this clause must be very carefully written to unallowed black box replacement, which could became a means to bypass the GPL licence. 

Maybe it could be possible to specify explicitly in the code that this piece of RAM/ROM could be what ever you want.

nicO

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Webmail Nerim, http://www.nerim.net/


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