[En-Nut-Discussion] Ethernut on TI's Cortex-M3 (Stellaris LM3S...)

[Philipp Burch]

Hi Uwe,

On 10/28/2012 06:27 PM, Uwe Bonnes wrote:
>>>>>> "Philipp" == Philipp Burch <phip at hb9etc.ch> writes:
>
> ...
>
>      Philipp> Then, another concern is the whole licensing shit. While
>      Philipp> checking the patch above, I skimmed through TI's license file
>      Philipp> for the CMSIS, located in nut/include/arch/cm3/lm3/vendor/. I
>      Philipp> don't really understand it, but is it possible, that TI
>      Philipp> basically prohibits the redistribution of these files? If so,
>      Philipp> we would need to add another annoying hurdle for possible users
>      Philipp> and require them to download and unpack the headers
>      Philipp> themselves. I really hate it.
>
> Huch,
>
> anything licensed under
> (lm3)nut/include/arch/cm3/lm3/vendor/license.html
> should never and probably will never go into Ethernut. It is in total
> contrast to
> (lm3)nut/include/arch/cm3/lm3/vendor/lm3s9b96.h
> Does above license apply to another group of files? Does one hand at  TI
> eventually not know what the other hands does?

ok, I've had another look at all this. The situation is as follows:

TI provides their "StellarisWare" distribution which contains
- Lots of examples
- Their "driverlib" called collection of high-level functions to access 
the processor peripherals
- Some third-party components
- The "raw" header files, one of those is lm3s9b96.h

Additionally, there are three license-related files which I've uploaded 
to http://hb9etc.ch/ethernut/licenses/ for reference:
- license.html, this is the one also contained in my copy of the source tree
- MANIFEST.TXT containing a list of the included components and their 
respective licenses
- manifest.html, which looks to have the same content as MANIFEST.TXT

When scrolling to the "Stellaris Device Header Files", it reads this:

-------- 8< --------- 8< -----------
Software Name:  Stellaris Device Header Files
Version:        9107
License Type:   TI BSD
Delivered As:   Source
Modified by TI: N/A
Location:       ./inc
Obtained From:  TI
-------- 8< --------- 8< -----------

Whatever "TI BSD" means...


Additionally, I've found TI's CMSIS files for their devices in a 
different package. This is where the lm3s9b96_cmsis.h file comes from 
(originally named LM3S9B96.h). This package does only contain one 
licensing file, named "LICENSE.txt", which you can find in the same 
folder as the others above. As far as I can tell, this contains the same 
as the license.html file. So this would probably render their CMSIS 
files useless as they might not be used for almost anything.

So what to do about all this?

Thanks,
Philipp