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Controlsuite and mware license

david berger
Prodigy 110 points
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: CONTROLSUITE

Hello,

I was wondering what the licensing was for various source files in controlsuite. 

I"ve seen https://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/c2000/f/171/t/342911 and essentially we have the exact opposite concern. Namely, we have a piece of software we want to open source and make available that has dependencies on the binary flash libraries as well as some of the driverlib components. Ideally we want to just check these files in so that it is easier for people to use, and so that we keep fine grain control over which version of these things the various components use. 

This is pretty much how we do it in our private repo so that developers can easily build without having to download or configure the whole of controlsuite if they aren't mainly working on the DSP portion of our project, and it works well. The alternative would be to re-do our project links to use the CCS_INSTALL_ROOT variable in eclipse, and provide instructions on how and where to download the controlsuite. Not insurmountable, but annoying to people wanting to look at the project. 

Have a good one!

  • 0
    TI__Guru* 89485 points
    Hi David,

    A few questions:

    Which open source license do you plan to use?

    Which portions of controlSUITE do you want to use (something in device_support only or from the development kits etc?)

    How are you planning to use this open source software with portions of controlSUITE?

    Are you working with any one at TI - a distributor or FAE that could contact me?

    Thank you
    Lori
  • 0 in reply to Lori Heustess
    Prodigy 110 points

    Hi Lori,

    Thanks for getting back to me. 

    The choice of license is a little up in the air; mostly so that we could make it compatible with the controlsuite ones. We were mainly considering the Apache and MIT license. The LGPL was considered, but the language of linking vs library vs etc is a bit too open ended for embedded applications, and I think this might scare off companies who would otherwise use the project and possibly contribute to it. 

    The portions of controlsuite we are using for this come exclusively from device_support/f28m35x/v202 -- they are the driverlib project, including headers, headers from MWare's inc directory, headers and select C files from v202\F28M35x_common\source. Also, notably, we use the headers from FlashAPI, and would also include the binary libraries F021_API_C28x_FPU32.lib and F021_API_CortexM3_LE.lib. 

    In terms of how we plan on using the controlsuite code, we are linking against driverlib and including some of its headers, and we are building the relevant F28M3x_*.c files into the C28 project as linked files. The used project files / header / source files used are kept in a 'ti' directory distinct from our own projects. So far there are no modifications made to any of the mentioned TI files, and the only reason I could ever see for modifying one of those files is if there is a defect, which we'd likely just opt to report to TI and re-target from v202 to the version with the appropriate fix. 

    As far as I can tell we have no direct distributor or FAE that we are working with. 

    It might be a bit of a tall order, especially in terms of having the binary lib files in the repo, but it seemed worthwhile to ask since we only have a dependency on ~5mb out of a 1.4gb install. If distribution of any of the above is an issue, we'll fall back to expecting controlsuite to be installed in the default location and include instructions on download and installation. 

    Thanks!

  • 0 in reply to david berger
    TI__Guru* 89485 points

    David,


    My apologies. I missed that you had provided more information.  I will need to check with legal again. 


    Regards

    Lori

  • 0 in reply to Lori Heustess
    Prodigy 110 points
    Any reply from legal?
  • 0 in reply to david berger
    TI__Guru* 89485 points
    David,

    David,

    The issue will be that our proprietary license does not allow the user to link our proprietary software to an open source in such a way that the propriety code is then subject to an open source license.

    Some of the content you mention is under a BSD license which does allow for redistribution of the source as long as the copyright / license header is kept or you do not have to redistribute the source as long as credit is given. You can find this information in those files. In particular the driverlib files.

    The question is how do you want to distribute the proprietary content?

    Regards
    Lori