How can i disable as many 5 clause licensed parts of the nrf connect sdk except as absolutely necessary to use the hardware.

[Johnny]

I'm willing to use the 5 claused licensed code for the parts that only work with nordic hardware, but the partition manager isn't actually necessary. Is there some way to turn that off, or any other 5 claused license code that I might accidentally depend on?

[Johnny]

I'm mostly using the nrfconnect sdk just for access to the softdevice since it is qualified (and any other drivers not yet in zepyr). Most of the other stuff is really problematic in an open source context.

[Didrik Rokhaug]

Hi,

With NCS v2.0.0, we made it easier to find what licenses are used by the libraries included in your project.

https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/2.0.0/nrf/scripts/west_commands/sbom/README.html#west-sbom

I haven't tried the tool myself, but I believe it will give you a list of files, togther with the license that covers that file.

That should let you know which libraries/modules you are using with the 5 clause license. From there, you can look at the Kconfig file of the library/module to see if there is a way to disable the library/module.

E.g. for the Partition Manager, you could try to set CONFIG_PARTITION_MANAGER_ENABLED=n (though I cannot guarantee that your project will work without the Partition Manager).

Best regards,

Didrik

P.S.

Johnny said:

Most of the other stuff is really problematic in an open source context.

I'll admit that I don't know very much about the differences between different software licenses. May I ask what makes the license problematic?

[Johnny]

CONFIG_PARTITION_MANAGER_ENABLED=n is a readonly option as per https://github.com/nrfconnect/sdk-nrf/blob/main/subsys/partition_manager/Kconfig#L9

It's not possible to disable that way without also manually disabling those other options that auto select it (https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/latest/kconfig/index.html) of which I don't know the consequences of.

Here's an example of the license: https://github.com/nrfconnect/sdk-nrf/blob/main/LICENSE#L24 and the problematic clauses.

#4 and #5 are the real problems.  Of course they are necessary in the cases of the softtdevice, and acceptable (but slightly annoying) in the case of interfacing with nordic hardware specifically. Although as far as i can tell, you can disable most of by simply not using them. And as mentioned before, it's not simple to turn off the partition manager.

I could  be breaking clause #4 if the partition manager got used for building any other non nordic chip, so I'd just like to make sure it's off altogether.

There might be other unnecessary code, so I will be inspecting the sbom indeed.

[Didrik Rokhaug]

Johnny said:

CONFIG_PARTITION_MANAGER_ENABLED=n is a readonly option as per https://github.com/nrfconnect/sdk-nrf/blob/main/subsys/partition_manager/Kconfig#L9

It's not possible to disable that way without also manually disabling those other options that auto select it (https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/latest/kconfig/index.html) of which I don't know the consequences of.

I know the documentation says that it is read-only, but I had a small hope that it also actually controlled something (just that you are not supposed to set it yourself).

However, the Partition Manager should not be used if you don't have a child image in your project. So as long as you avoid that, you should be good.