segger licenses required but no commercial use allowed

[dewid2]

It seems nordic devices can not be programmed without certain segger software.

In order to set up my toolchain, I had to install SEGGER Embedded Studio IDE (although i dont use it) and the J-Link Software seperately. Regarding the IDE, I read this announcement

https://www.segger.com/news/segger-embedded-studio-ide-now-free-for-nordic-sdk-users/

but this does not seems to be valid anymore. Was the collaboration cancelled? When I downloaded it a few days ago, the license mentioned nordic with not a single word. Also J-Link does effectively prohibit me from commercial use of anything I do with my nrf52832 DK.

While that is not the case right now, I'd still like to keep that option open for the future.

Now I want to know if there is a way to avoid segger software (i dont even use the debug right now, just programming). Or some very recent solid and verified official statements that allow me to use the segger software described.

[Nguyen Hoan Hoang]

SES is a custom version of Eclipse that is limited to Segger and Nordic.  You can use regular Eclipse & GCC too and without limitations.  I used it for many ARM based development with the same Eclipse, not just nRF5x.  Follow this blog for Eclipse installation.  

nRF5x Development with Eclipse & GCC

[Bjørn Kvaale]

Nordic also has an Eclipse/GCC tutorial, but we have had many customer complaints regarding eclipse unfortunately (just take a look at all of the comments below the tutorial). I have not used eclipse/gcc personally (apart from SES), so I cannot comment on this. Most likely if you know what you are doing, Eclipse/GCC is a great solution.

All I know is that many support engineers at Nordic use SES & you will most likely get better support if you use SES instead of Eclipse. At the end of the day, @dewid2 , you need to decide for yourself what development path you want to take.