Licensing options for firmware

[David Webber (XML)]

One thing I've done in a similar situation - is obfuscate the
source code first.

You should be able to find a download link for my old obfuscator
tool - ShroudIt!

I guess there's nothing in an open source license that says that
people actually have to be able to read your code?!?

Anyway - I had a very similar pickle - we want to sell
a code base to Japanese hardware companies - so they
could link it into their firmware - but we could not provide them
with link objects - because their processor environments all
proprietary.

Well the obfuscated code worked very nicely.  Several
companies bought it from us - and they could work with
all the API calls and even extend them - because those
function names were in plain text - but they could not
modify the underlying code base.

DW

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Matthew Garrett" <mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org>
To: <license-discuss at opensource.org>
Sent: Monday, April 04, 2005 8:35 PM
Subject: Re: Licensing options for firmware


> On Mon, 2005-04-04 at 11:50 -0700, Scott Miller wrote:
>
> > I realize that this probably means it won't qualify as true Open Source.
> > But I'm in this to benefit the community, not a bunch of Japanese
> > corporations.  And I'm sinking thousands of dollars of my own money into
> > developing and manufacturing the hardware.  I face a lot more risk
without
> > some protection for my code, and that risk might make it more difficult
to
> > secure funding for the manufacturing.
>
> It's possible to release your code under a license that is advantageous
> to the open source community without being open source. However, there's
> no way you can release code under an open source license without it
> being possible for your competitors to use it in ways that may harm
> you.
>
> If you want the former without the latter, then you'll have to accept
> that your code isn't open source - however, if that's what you want then
> that's what you should do. Open source isn't about forcing people to
> release code under open source licenses, and if you feel that your
> concerns are legitimate then you should pay attention to them.
>
> -- 
> Matthew Garrett | mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org
>
>