What about licensing and copyrights?

[Anne van Rossum]

Dear Nordic,

The guys at ARM have this community around mbed which looks great. I would like to use it, but before I do, I would like to check if their use of your (source) code is acceptable. See e.g. the files that are part of their SDK, such as:

developer.mbed.org/.../app_button.h

And for example a copy of that repos on github: github.com/.../TARGET_MCU_NRF51822

Thanks a lot!

[Asbjørn]

It looks like you have posted the same question on the mBED forum as well and gotten a reply from Eirik Midttun. That actually sums it up quite well. developer.mbed.org/.../

The SDK license agreement can be found here.

[Anne van Rossum]

Hi Asbjørn, I don't know if Eirik Midttun is actually a Nordic employee, so it is difficult for me to assess his/her answer.

I understood "non-transferable use of information" as not being allowed to transfer this information (header file or source file). I think that I know understand that it can be freely copied as long as it is used in combination with licensed Nordic products and it doesn't transfer to other non-Nordic products.

The only thing that is weird then is the "preventing unauthorized access" clause, because if you put them online they are for everyone to grab.

[Asbjørn]

Yes, he's a Nordic employee.

We are basically giving our customers the option of using the code and tools we offer free of charge as long as the headers in files are kept and not shared to be used outside Nordic products.

I'm an engineer and not an attorney, so I might not be giving you the most concrete answers, but we're not going to stand in the way of our customers using sample code and tools we supply to develop new and great products based on our chips. As you say though, we have made it available for everyone to use, but requests that people use the code and tools with in compliance with the license agreements.