[Xenomai-help] Re: Licensing issues

["Schlägl Manfred jun." <manfred.schlaegl@domain.hid>]

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Its a very difficult question. I'm also interestet in it.

Adeos is under GPL.
Xenomai-code in ksrc is under GPL; 
userspace Xenomai-code is under LGPL

Kernel-sources are under GPL, because several functions of the kernel can only be used by GPL-licensed modules. 
Userspace code is under LGPL, but the kernel-code is used by syscalls ...

So it's really hard to determine if applications have to be GPLed or LGPLed at this point...


BUT! 

The header-files are GPLed with following exception:

COPYING:
...
As a special exception to the following license, the Xenomai
project gives permission for additional uses of the header files
contained in this directory.

The exception is that, if you include these header files unmodified to
produce application programs executing in user-space that use
Xenomai services by normal Xenomai system calls, this does not
by itself cause the resulting executable to be covered by the GNU
General Public License. This is merely considered normal use of the
Xenomai system, and does not fall under the heading of "derived
work".

This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the
executable file might be covered by the GNU General Public License. In
any case, this exception never applies when the application code is
built as a static or dynamically loadable portion of the Linux kernel.

This exception applies only to the code released by the Xenomai
project under the name Xenomai and bearing this exception notice.
If you copy code from other sources into a copy of Xenomai, the
exception does not apply to the code that you add in this way.
...


But is this exception airtight? Is it hard enought to stand a court-case? I don't know.

	- Manfred

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