Hello,
I dont know if this is the rigth subforum for my Question...
If i want to build an application for commercial purposes with the Software provided with the DM355 Board (MontaVista, Demos, Codecs for encode/decode, etc.),
are there any license restrictions i should pay attention to?
How much are these Licenses and where can i get them. My Boss wants to know for planning the project i am working on...
I hope you could help me finding some answers for these questions.
Alex
When you run the installer for the software you must click through a end user license agreement (EULA) which provides the basis of the licensing, note that I am not a lawyer so if you want a valid legal opinion you need to take the agreement to your legal department for review.
As I understand you should be able to go to production with the softare that is included with the DM355 EVM board, including the demo Monta Vista install, the demos/examples, and the codecs themselves, as the Monta Vista install is largely GPL, and the demos and codecs are provided by TI. The one thing you may want to keep in mind is that if you have a certain amount of volume there will be a fee to the owners of the MPEG IP (not TI) per device/implementation for licensing it, assuming you are using the MPEG4 codec.
Again, you will want to work with your legal department to ensure everything is truly licensed properly, we cannot provide legal advice here.
Alex,
You can use the MV Distro (based on really old kernel and you will not get support), demos, and codecs free of charge. Actually, with regards to the codecs, you can produce up to 25,000 units for free, after that you will need to pay ($0.25 if I recall correctly) to the MPEG standards committee for each additional unit. If you are planning on using over 25K DM355 in production, please let us know and we can get you more details. This should answer the pricing questions.
With regards to licensing, you are already accepting a ULA during the DVSDK installation process. Also, keep in mind that with most Linux software (especially the Linux kernel), you are bound by GPL license. I believe this is all you should need to be aware of with regards to licensing.
thanx so far, maybe i'll have some further questions after the meeting with my boss.
i did a quick shot for mpeg4 licenses, and i agree to you juan, but i found a number of 50000 pieces per year...
i dont think there are so much pieces, maybe 100 or 200 per year but everything is still in research and development state :)
so thx again
You are correct; it appears 50K units is the limit; please let us know if there is anything else we can assist you with.