4 ms·
> No, you couldn't because it's not GPL. It's a license that is nearly identical to the GPL, but slightly different. Then they actually are not allowed to call
by cyphar 10y ago
> No, you couldn't because it's not GPL. It's a license that is nearly identical to the GPL, but slightly different.
Then they actually are not allowed to call it the "GNU General Public License" (or in fact, they are not allowed to modify the license terms). It's the first condition in the license text of the GPL, I'm surprised their lawyers didn't notice that little chestnut.
- slavik81 10y agoYou clearly have a better understanding of this issue than I do. My reading was that they were calling theirs the "FreeRTOS open source license", and it just referenced the GPL.
- cyphar 10y agoHmmm. I'm not sure what the FSF's opinion on it would be. Since they don't call it the GPL (I must've skipped over that part) then they might be in the clear -- though they're still modifying the license text by prepending restrictions to it that make the rest of the license text contradictory.
- pfalcon 10y agoI'm very glad to have found this discussion, as I have concerns (as expressed above) with FreeRTOS for some time. I would be really interested what FSF would say too. cyphar, emmelaich, slavik81, et al. - would anyone of you be interested enough in this case to actually try to follow with FSF/related parties? Please reply here if you're interested, or feel free to get in touch at pfalcon-at-users.sourceforge.net.
- cyphar 10y agoEmail rms@gnu.org. That's literally all there is to it. If he thinks there's a valid case then he'll forward it to the right FSF people.
- cyphar 10y agoI emailed RMS. His response was that he will investigate it. If it becomes a thing there'll probably be a post on HN describing what went down.
- pfalcon 10y agoThanks for response cyphar, and thanks for taking an action. And glad to hear RMS reads email and even replies, I'd think one would need to chase FSF's legal advisers to bring up this matter.
- rincebrain 10y agoGiven that their exception explicitly contains the quote "Linking FreeRTOS with other modules is making a combined work based on FreeRTOS. Thus, the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public License V2 cover the whole combination.", I feel like they've not got much leg to stand on with that claim.