fsl EULA and license flags

fsl EULA and license flags

[Trevor Woerner]

I'm evaluating a couple SBCs for use in a commercial product. There are 
several Freescale-based devices that interest me. The OE-based Freescale 
builds always have:

ACCEPT_FSL_EULA = "1"
and
LICENSE_FLAGS_WHITELIST = "commercial"

I'm not a lawyer and I realize most of the people on this list aren't 
lawyers either, but does anyone have an armchair-lawyer or 
engineering-style explanation for the commercial ramifications of these 
options? All I need for now is enough information to help me decide if I 
should include Freescale devices in my short list or not.

Can I build a usable core-image-minimal without those options?

Re: fsl EULA and license flags

[Otavio Salvador]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2015 at 12:11 PM, Trevor Woerner <twoerner@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm evaluating a couple SBCs for use in a commercial product. There are
> several Freescale-based devices that interest me. The OE-based Freescale
> builds always have:
>
> ACCEPT_FSL_EULA = "1"
> and
> LICENSE_FLAGS_WHITELIST = "commercial"
>
> I'm not a lawyer and I realize most of the people on this list aren't
> lawyers either, but does anyone have an armchair-lawyer or engineering-style
> explanation for the commercial ramifications of these options? All I need
> for now is enough information to help me decide if I should include
> Freescale devices in my short list or not.
>
> Can I build a usable core-image-minimal without those options?

I don't think the LICENSE_FLAGS_WHITELIST = "commercial" should be
used as they've been doing. It whitelist all commercial licenses
inside OE and this is too generic.

What you are asking is impossible. I think you'll need to review each
license and check it with your customer about feasibility of those.
The new EULA also change some aspects which are worth considering and
depending may allow or block a branch change.

-- 
Otavio Salvador                             O.S. Systems
http://www.ossystems.com.br        http://code.ossystems.com.br
Mobile: +55 (53) 9981-7854            Mobile: +1 (347) 903-9750

Re: fsl EULA and license flags

[Lauren Post]

Just a note that none of this is legal guidance just areas to look into.  To understand this best, I recommend getting a legal representative to understand the terms of our EULA and also packages that require additional licensing.

If you do include the commercial white list then you need to check all licenses to make sure you have rights to distribute them.  
Most cases that I see commercial white list is regarding packages that require patent/licensing fees.

One of the non- Freescale packages that require the commercial white list is chromium because of the audio/video libraries required that have licensing fees for one.  We test with it internally but do not require it in any of our package group image recipes.

The commercial white list is primarily there to force those to know that their distribution requires some type of licensing/distribution work.  Take this out and see what breaks on a clean build.  If a recipes requires it and this does not exist in the build environment then the build will break.

In our EULA, we do state that for our Freescale Proprietary packages customers are required to handle all patent licensing fees.  Because we do ship codecs, as an example, then you are required to do this as part of the agreement you accepted using i.MX (See Section 7). MPEG LA was added in our Appendix of our EULA.  We also have 3rd party software listed in our appendix with restrictions.  

It is important that you work with a legal representative to understand these terms.  Our proprietary software although free from Freescale is not free to distribute.  However many of these same issues also apply if not using Freescale software such as ffmpeg which has the same requirements on audio and video technology that has patent and license obligations.

But to answer your question Can I build a usable core-image-minimal without those options?  The answer is yes because it does not include any proprietary packages and uboot and kernel which are all open source software.  Section 4 in our EULA for Open source explains that the EULA does not apply to open source licenses.

Lauren


Lauren

-----Original Message-----
From: meta-freescale-bounces@yoctoproject.org [mailto:meta-freescale-bounces@yoctoproject.org] On Behalf Of Otavio Salvador
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2015 11:24 AM
To: Trevor Woerner
Cc: meta-freescale@yoctoproject.org
Subject: Re: [meta-freescale] fsl EULA and license flags

On Mon, Apr 20, 2015 at 12:11 PM, Trevor Woerner <twoerner@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm evaluating a couple SBCs for use in a commercial product. There 
> are several Freescale-based devices that interest me. The OE-based 
> Freescale builds always have:
>
> ACCEPT_FSL_EULA = "1"
> and
> LICENSE_FLAGS_WHITELIST = "commercial"
>
> I'm not a lawyer and I realize most of the people on this list aren't 
> lawyers either, but does anyone have an armchair-lawyer or 
> engineering-style explanation for the commercial ramifications of 
> these options? All I need for now is enough information to help me 
> decide if I should include Freescale devices in my short list or not.
>
> Can I build a usable core-image-minimal without those options?

I don't think the LICENSE_FLAGS_WHITELIST = "commercial" should be used as they've been doing. It whitelist all commercial licenses inside OE and this is too generic.

What you are asking is impossible. I think you'll need to review each license and check it with your customer about feasibility of those.
The new EULA also change some aspects which are worth considering and depending may allow or block a branch change.

-- 
Otavio Salvador                             O.S. Systems
http://www.ossystems.com.br        http://code.ossystems.com.br
Mobile: +55 (53) 9981-7854            Mobile: +1 (347) 903-9750
--
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