[En-Nut-Discussion] MCD_ST_LIBERTY and ST_GUIDANCE_ONLY question

[Henrik Maier]

On 20/05/2013 11:50 PM, Harald Kipp wrote:
>> libopencm3 tries to rewrite the STM32 headers. But they are a _rewrite_,
>> incomplete and more error-prone. Do you think we should cosinsider for
>> Ethernut to switch to those headers?
>
> Changing from STM licensed code to incomplete LGPL licensed code with
> errors doesn't make sense to me.

Considering the small man-power we have in the Ethernut project, I like 
to question if it makes sense to re-invent the wheel and rewrite any 
headers the manufacturer already supplies. I don't think this would make 
any sense (from a technical perspective).

>
> As an alternative we may completely remove all non-BSDL header files and
> let the user get them from a different source, clearly stating the
> related license.

As a user of a STM32 CPU I will download data sheets, application notes, 
example code and other libraries from ST's web site in order to 
familiarise myself with the CPU. In most cases users already have 
downloaded the STM32Fxxx Standard Peripherals Library
anyway.

I don't see any problem to remove the STM libraries from Nut/OS 
completely and have any user wishing to use STM32 CPUs to download it 
and copy it into an appropriate directory of the Nut/OS build tree.

I look at this in a similar way as the avrlibc library for the AVRs 
which is essential to compile Nut/OS but also not distributed as part of it.

The same concept can be applied to any future CPU we like to support.

Henrik