RE: [Avr-libc-corelib] Reuse of Procyon

[Weddington, Eric]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: 
> address@hidden 
> [mailto:address@hidden
> gnu.org] On Behalf Of Joe Pardue
> Sent: Monday, September 21, 2009 7:10 PM
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: [Avr-libc-corelib] Reuse of Procyon
> 
> I've tried off and on for over a year to get in touch with 
> Pascal Stang and though I'm used to being ignored, I'm 
> thinking maybe something else is going on with him relating 
> to Procyon. I assume from some of the comments that other 
> folks have had similar difficulties? 
>  
> So my question is: how much of the Procyon library can we 
> reuse as is without getting anybody too excited?

None, because of licensing issues. The Procyon library is licensed with the 
GPL. If we copy and paste anything, and try to put a different license on it, 
then we violate the GPL license.


>  Do we have 
> to go entirely clean-room? If not where would we draw the 
> line at copy and pasting the code? It seems silly to rewrite 
> things if the code is truly abandoned, but then again it 
> seems kind of like theft of IP if he is still around and pops 
> up a year down the road to protest. 
>  
> It seems silly to reinvent the wheel when that code could be 
> a good starting base for the avr-libc-corelib, but I don't 
> know what the ethics of this would be.
>  
> Personally, I'd be happy to copy and paste the whole thing 
> with a disclaimer at the beginning, but I'm sure the GPL vs 
> BSD license folks wouldn't be happy, so is there a guideline 
> on what constitutes 'appropriate reuse' and when that phrase 
> just means 'stealing'?

You really need to go read the GPL license and the BSD license to understand 
these issues. There is no 'appropriate reuse' if we intend to license with BSD. 
We would be violating the GPL license of the Procyon library.

As other have said, we should be fine if we use the same interface (function 
names, parameters, return values), but the implementation has to be all new. 
There cannot be any wholesale copying of anything.