SDK and SoftDevice licenses

[Max]

Hello,

Since this seems to be a very hard topic to find info about (its very contradictory and confuse) I'd like to ask a Nordic employee directly.

I'm planning to build a product that will use the NRF51822 MCU.

I'd like to use it's BLE functionalities.

My question is, from what I've gathered around reading, I can't share headers/source code that uses SDK stuff.

Is there any problem with selling the chip, as part of the product, already flashed with a softdevice + application ?

The code itself would not be shared in anyway (we plan to keep it closed source).

Would there be any limitations?

[Roger Clark]

I can't speak for Nordic, but....

Is there any problem with selling the chip, as part of the product, already flashed with a softdevice + application ?

Yes. That is totally OK. Its what all commercial products that use the Nordic MCU's do. (apart from blank modules and experimenter kits etc)

I can't share headers/source code that uses SDK stuff. Do you mean your headers or Nordic's headers?

There is nothing to stop you sharing your own headers even if they reference Nordic headers.

You just can't ship the Nordic headers as part of your product. (at least not at the moment, though I know the license is in the process of changing)

[endnode]

I also don't see any hard time to find the licensing terms: they are enclosed to each Soft Device and SDK release, there is blog post on blog zone and there are several Q&S on this forum answered by Nordic team...

[Max]

They are a bit difficult to understand, since I've seen people say that you can't ship stuff with the SoftDevice flashed.

I don't plan on releasing code, just flashing it and sending it shipped already flashed with the SoftDevice + Application.

[Max]

So if I sent my own pcb that has a NRF51822 incorporated, I could send it already flashed with the softdevice + my application and it wouldn't break any copyright or anything?

I just want to know for sure before wasting a lot of time onto this.

Anyway to get a Nordic employee to answer to this thread or just wait and be lucky?

My question is that I want to use the SoftDevice and the SDK to develop my own application to use on the NRF51822. The chip will be a NRF51822 from Nordic so I believe that as long as I keep SDK code to the NRF51822 which is a Nordic MCU I'm acting according to the SDK license. My problem is with the SoftDevice license.

So I can flash the SoftDevice + Application into the NRF51822 and sell it incorporated onto my product, correct?

[endnode]

You definitely can ship product with SD flashed, otherwise no one would be able to use SD in production:)