USB support

[Mark Johannes]

Jerry,

We added the clause to protect RTEMS and its parts (those that are not
covered by other licenses such as openBSD, etc...) and to allow the end user
not to be forced to provide their code under the GPL as well (the
contamination problem of GPL).

A true GPL'ed piece of code would prohibit its use by proprietary
applications.  This is not the intent of the RTEMS license.  Therefore, we
would have to analyze the exact license that you intend to apply.  Please do
not take this as we do not want your submission, we just have to careful to
protect our users and the OS itself.

Thanks,

Mark Johannes
OAR Corporation

-----Original Message-----
From: Jerry James [mailto:Jerry.James at usu.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2005 1:19 PM
To: RTEMS
Subject: USB support

I am working on a project with some RTEMS users who have an embedded
board with generic USB hardware.  They have mentioned several times how
nice it would be to have USB support in RTEMS.  I am going to try to
convince them to throw some programmer hours at the problem.

In a message to this forum last year, Joel Sherrill mentioned that OAR
has a partial port of some BSD stack.  If I succeed in getting some
programmer hours dedicated to this task, would you be willing to share
your partial port with us to give us a head start?  In return, I can
promise that anything we accomplish will be released back to you under 
the BSD license (or whatever free/open license is appropriate).

Speaking of licenses, would a port of a GPLed USB stack be okay, since
the primary RTEMS license is the GPL?  This message:

http://www.rtems.com/ml/rtems-users/2003/october/msg00145.html

indicated it is not, and other messages indicate that that is due to the
special exception clause in the RTEMS license.  I have to admit that I
don't fully understand the issues, though.

Regards,
-- 
Jerry James, Assistant Professor    Email: Jerry.James at usu.edu
Computer Science Dept.              Web: http://www.cs.usu.edu/~jerry/
Utah State University