Re: [ECOS] Licensing of OpenSource code and eCos

[Iztok Zupet <iztok dot zupet at vsr dot si>]

On Thu, 2002-09-26 at 22:36, Peter Vandenabeele wrote:
> The philosophy of FSF is different and very precise on this matter. You 
> can read the motivation of the FSF on this page:
>   http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html
> This discussion on LGPL defines exactly why FSF strongly prefers to use 
> GPL as much as possible and avoid an LGPL (and for that matter ECOS-style)
> license when possible. This is a deliberate, political choice for "Freedom" 
> as defined by FSF.

That is true for Linux. The applications there are run as processes and
drivers can be loaded as modules. This scheme allows for proprietary
applications and drivers.

To achieve that "freedom" with the eCos as an OS, perhaps we need:

1. a system/user space program loader with memory protection support
2. a funny OS interrupt/exception
3. a driver module loader/unloader

Only then it could be fully GPL-ed.

Otherwise, the eCos can still follow the common practice, that is being
available under two licenses one fully GPL-ed and the other fully
commercial.

iz



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