Confused About Licensing

I've been looking all over the forums and I've read so many pages about GNU GPL I've got a head ache. So I’ve been developing this top secret device of mine for a few months and I think I’m finally getting somewhere. I’ve even got some prototype boards coming that have are about 200mm square, buttons, screens, relays, the works. I was thinking of using the mini but since I needed an SD card and LAN anyway I just put pins on the mainboard to interface with the plus. What Next. I want to sell them obviously and try to pay back all the money I’ve borrowed for the Netduino’s, proto boards and stuff. I think I’ve got a market to sell about 15 or so in my own country and who knows after that. It’s a very specific product. But along the way I’ve got help from people in the forums and used snippets of code that people have contributed. And even if I hadn’t I’d still be using the libraries that are included in the micro framework that were contributed by others. But on top of that I’ve got months of my own code and testing as well. Can I release the product to the market with having to provide the code to anyone who wants it. I don’t care if anyone steals the "hex code" off the device directly, cause if they’re willing to do that then there’d be no stopping them probably. But do I have to provide the C# I’ve used to compile it. Which one is the source code? Because it wouldn’t be hard for someone not so smart to then compete against me very easily. All they’d have to do is find a cheaper board provider and I wouldn’t be able to recoup any R&D. Can’t I put on the paper work something like the following…. This product was developed on, and utilizers the .netmicro framework and includes a Netduino Plus. Some of the “source code” has come from the Netduino forums and can be obtained on request as per GNU GPL rules. But the majority of the code belongs to Grant’s super-duper automation machines. I’m not trying to rip anyone off and I’m more than happy to return some of the profits to the key contributors. But if I have to I guess I could go open source. I haven’t thought about it that much. Grant

Hi Grant

First of all the netduino hardware itself is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License which AFAIK has no commercial restrictions.

As for the framework and libs provided by Secret Labs they are using an Apache license again AFAIK with no commercial covenants.

As for forum submitted content they are licensed under a Creative Commons Share Alike license as well, so again you should be ok from a commercial point of view.

The (somewhat hidden) legal page has a few more details here.

I know there are several commercial products using ND+'s (I work on one myself) but I guess if in doubt get legal advice.

Nak.

Thanks for the quick response. So I don’t even need to mention a disclaimer or anything like that. It would be hard to tell it was there unless you were looking pretty hard. It’s upside down on top of the mainboard. There should be like, a community appreciation prize pool. That when the community helps you with something you tip a little money into it or something. Then have like a, contributor of the month prize or something.

Hi Grant,

So I don’t even need to mention a disclaimer or anything like that. It would be hard to tell it was there unless you were looking pretty hard. It’s upside down on top of the mainboard.

With Netduino, everything is open source. The boards, design files and firmware are licensed under non-viral licenses.

There's no need for a disclaimer when it comes to Netduino or the .NET Micro Framework.

Many users will share their projects in the same spirit of open source, but there are also lots of commercial customers who put Netduinos inside their finished projects. And there are many who derive their own custom hardware from Netduino. In that last case, we ask that you include Netduino in the credits for your product (something like "this product is a derivative of Netduino"). But that's it.

Enjoy the freedom of open source

Chris