I need to parse a MIB file for OIDs and alarm types. However, I can't use mibble as it is GPL licensed. Is there any other tool or sample code I can use to parse MIB files in Java?
Before dismissing Mibble totally, perhaps worth mentioning there are non-GPL options with it. Quoting http://www.mibble.org/doc/faq/license/#Q12
Q12: Ok, GPL doesn't work for me. Now what do I do?
The GNU GPL licensed version of Mibble may not work for everyone.
There are a number of ways to approach this:
Purchase a Commercial License - As an alternative to using the GNU GPL, a non-exclusive commercial license for Mibble can be purchased.
Use an Older Version - Versions 1.2 to 2.3 of Mibble were licensed under GNU GPL but with an exception allowing linking with non-GPL
code, effectively making the license LGPL. All these versions contain
bugs and are unmaintained, but they may still work for you.
Relicense to GNU GPL - Any code licensed under the GNU GPL may freely use the Mibble library. By relicensing your software (or only
the applications dependant on Mibble) under GNU GPL you may continue
using the latest version of Mibble.
Related
So I've recently started implementing ffmpeg in an application that I do intend to distribute commercially. And I've had an hard time getting my head around the whole licensing process.
The most commonly answered question I've seen seems to be about x264 which requires a paid licence from x264.org in order to use it commercially (right?). I started to look into mpeg4 instead but that too seemed to be locked behind some patent licensing fee (https://www.mpegla.com/programs/mpeg-4-visual/license-agreement/).
I guess my question is the following, what video encoders compatible with FFMPEG are fully free to use?
Yes I barely know what I'm talking about, but I feel like I'm missing the elephant in the room here...
The most commonly answered question I've seen seems to be about x264 which requires a paid licence from x264.org in order to use it commercially (right?).
No. x264 is free to use. It doesn't matter if it is for commercial usage or not. It is licensed GPL. However, there is a non-GPL paid license available for those who can't comply with the GPL. What matters if you can comply with the GPL or not. If you can't, then you must buy the non-GPL license.
See Choose a License for a layman's list of what you need to do to comply with a specific license.
what video encoders compatible with FFMPEG are fully free to use?
From the viewpoint of FFmpeg all of them are free to use. Again, it doesn't matter if it is commercial or not. All you have to do is comply with whatever license your version of FFmpeg is using. It is licensed LGPL 2.1, or as GPL 2 if you use the --enable-gpl configure option.
There is no paid, non-GPL license available for FFmpeg. See FFmpeg License and Legal Considerations.
I would like to build SaaS application (with free and not free tiers).
And I want to use one of the editors: ckeditor or tinymce.
I don't want to pay for it.
Can I legally use it?
Can I use it if I will make my client app (which using editor) - open source (MIT license)?
P.S.
CKeditor - GPL, LGPL, MPL
Tinymce - LGPL
From the CKEditor FAQ:
CKEditor is distributed under the GPL, LGPL and MPL Open Source licenses. >this triple copyleft licensing model is flexible and allows you to choose >the license that is best suited for your needs.
The GPL grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the free >software definition and uses copyleft to ensure the freedoms are preserved, >even when the work is changed or added to.
The LGPL places copyleft restrictions on the program governed under it but >does not apply these restrictions to other software that merely link with >the program. The main difference between the GPL and the LGPL is that the >latter allows the work to be linked with a non-(L)GPLed program, regardless >of whether it is free software or proprietary software.
The MPL allows covered source code to be mixed with other files under a >different, even proprietary license. However, code files licensed under the >MPL must remain under the MPL and be freely available in source form.
From the Tinymce FAQ:
Are there any restrictions to using TinyMCE in my commercial
application?
Yes, there are restrictions including the following. All
copyright notices must be intact as Moxiecode Systems are the
copyright owners of the source code. You cannot use the source code in
your applications without complying with the LGPL. According to the
provisions of the LGPL, any modifications or add-ons you make to the
source have to be released for the community's benefit. We recommend
that you always contribute your changes back to the TinyMCE community,
regardless of the situation. If you start to make a lot of revenue
from using TinyMCE, please remember the time and dedication that has
been put into this by other developers, respect this and give credit
to those who deserve it.
As long as you don't mess with the source code you are fine to use it for your use case (own tinymce plugins are no problem regarding this license).
If i were you i'd would go for Tinymce.
I'm an embedded software engineer working with IA-32 type processors. We are looking for a compiler tool chain - preferable free.
We used to use Mentor Graphics CodeBench Lite but it's no longer available.
We have looked at other GCC distributions but none of them have a bare metal implementation of glibc. None except newlib but we can't use it because of the GPL and LGPL licencing issues. We're an OEM and our customers (and us) have proprietary code.
Any suggestions welcome.
Sourcery's "lite" gpl tools are still available, it's just that Mentor likes to play hide-the-link.
If you want a lightweight C library with non-GPL licensing, you might look at Bionic from Android.
However, you concern may be mistaken. IANAL but most C library licenses have a linking exception of some sort which you may want to research with the help of your lawyers - their utility as system libraries would be extremely limited without.
And actually, a quick search of the newlib licensing page (which is complicated) seems to show that more of it is under BSD-style licenses than under GPL-style ones, though care would be needed to sort it all out.
Mentor may no longer be providing a Lite edition of the IA-32 bare-metal toolchain, but I'm pretty sure it's still supported in the commercial editions, and a basic license is not that expensive.
As Chris says, the Newlib licensing page is a bit complicated -- but the gist of it is that basically all of it that you need for a bare-metal system is BSD licensed; IIRC, the parts that are GPL-licensed are clearly-delineated system-specific pieces that reference things in the Linux kernel or the like (and thus have to be GPL-licensed), and those aren't included in the bare-metal builds. I think they're even all in one or two distinct directories that you can just delete. Obviously you should do the analysis for yourself, but that's the result you should expect to find.
A shortcut that may be useful: The download page for the most recent version of CodeBench Lite for IA-32 ELF that was produced is on this page. If you download the source tarball from there, you'll get the Newlib sources that were used to build that, and there's also a .sh file in the package indicating how it was configured and built. You'll note that in the documentation (licenses are in the back of the Getting Started Guide) the Newlib binaries are simply listed as BSD-licensed, so this should show you how Mentor got a compiled library that fits that licensing description.
(Disclaimer: I used to work for Mentor until recently.)
I wonder if anyone is using GCC as production stable toolchain for Freescale's 68HC12 microcontroller family. It seems to me that there aren't up-to-date toolchains other than that from Freescale itself and those from Cosmic Software (http://www.cosmic-software.com/) and IAR (http://www.iar.com/), of course.
GNU 68HC11/12 (http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/m68hc11) is based on GCC 3.1 and its latest news is 4-year old
GCC-4.6 declared (http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.6/changes.html) that Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 architectures are obsolete
GCC-HCS12 (http://gcc-hcs12.com/) sounds promising for what I'm looking for, yet it seems unmaintained. There exists a dozing Google Group gcc-hcs12 (http://groups.google.com/group/gcc-hcs12/), though. Plus, the available zip download contains a file called gnu-68hc1x-3.1.exe dated 2007.
MegaSquirt (http://www.msextra.com/tools/) seems to offer the most maintained toolchain, packaged on 29 Oct 2010. It is built on extended versions of the SCz tools (which I don't know what it means):
binutils-2.18 with S12X and XGATE enhancements
gcc-3.3.6 with S12/S12X ldivmod and larith enhancements
newlib with 9s12x target
GNU 68HC11/12 is based on GCC 3.3.6. The GNU 68HC11/12 release 3.1 is a bundle package which contains the complete tool chain based on Gcc 3.3.6, Gdb 6.4, Binutils 2.15 and Newlib 1.12.0.
Several projects have used it as a basis for their own needs. GCC-HCS12 and MegaSquirt are examples of such projects.
Some board vendors have also shipped the GNU 68HC11/12 version with their board.
MegaSquirt did some improvements on my original port for the support of XGate and
better support for H9S12X.
The gcc 3.3.6 release is the most stable and production ready release. Despite its apparent
oldness, it is more stable than what you could get with gcc 4.x recent mainstream releases.
The obsolete announcement is sad but I don' have time to work on repairing what is broken in GCC 4.6.
Is this possible, since Apple has open sourced the code (libdispatch?) I'm bit confused as to how one can make use of this. Is this like a library with an API that any application can make use of, or an OS feature built into Mac OS X? Can application built "for" Macs and iPhone (with iOS 4) alone make use of this library?
I assume one has to run a port to make gcc also compatible with the new semantic that Apple has introduced.
It's almost a year later but I'm using it quite happily on Ubuntu Natty. Proper packages are coming in Oneiric.
Having read the Ars Technica overview, it appears there are several challenges
GCD makes extensive use of blocks (an Apple extension to C that approximates closures) which means your compiler needs to support blocks. The standard version of gcc has no support for blocks, so you'll either have to port Apple's changes to the Linux gcc or use clang/llvm.
The Mac OS X version of GCD involves some code in the kernel. Clearly, if kernel changes are required to Linux to support GCD, that is a major piece of work. However, it seems that a user space only port is possible.
GCD is licensed under the Apache License. Apparently, this license is not compatible with GPL v2. So you cannot use GCD in any app distributed under GPL v2. GPL v3 is OK though, so an app licensed under GPL v2 "or later" is OK.
Having said all that, the FreeBSD port has been done, so it must be possible.