RFduino and Closed Source Agreements

RE: RFduino and Closed Source Agreements

Anne van Rossum — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 11:49:41 GMT

My interpretation of your answer is "no" and "no". The question is answered. :-)

RE: RFduino and Closed Source Agreements

Ole Morten — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 11:47:26 GMT

No, code that's just calling our functions should be fine for distribution under any license the author of the calling code sees fit, as long as the actual SDK files are not included.

As far as I can see, the original question here have been answered, and I'd therefore be happy if you could accept my answer to clear up the question. :-)

RE: RFduino and Closed Source Agreements

Anne van Rossum — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 11:43:54 GMT

Hi Ole, Yes, that license text makes sense. It doesn't state that calling header files written by Nordic makes the calling code in some way contagiously proprietary as well.

It seems the RFduino people use it as an excuse. However, I don't understand why. IMHO they earn more money if there are more ways in which their hardware solution can be used. Keeping the Arduino bootloader proprietary and not even distribute it in binary form, seems counterproductive.

In other words, if there is business logic or legal issues involved, I don't understand it. :-) It feels like a mistake or miscommunication, which I would like to repair. :-)

RE: RFduino and Closed Source Agreements

Ole Morten — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 11:32:39 GMT

This is very hard to comment on, since we don't really know what source has gone into these tools. In general, all code from our SDK is not allowed redistributed under an open source license, so if RFDuino's tools use those in some way, there could be limitations. You can read the full license that covers the SDK here if you're interested.