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martonmiklos / sigrokdecoders_to_logic2_analyzers

Some utilities to wrap the sigrok project's python analyzers to be used in Saleae Logic 2.x
MIT License
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License collision #1

Open abraxa opened 4 years ago

abraxa commented 4 years ago

Hi, while interesting on a technical level, I don't think you're legally allowed to do this.

The Saleae API has no license and is hence considered incompatible with the GPL: https://github.com/saleae/logic2-extensions

The libsigrokdecode decoders are all GPLv2 and by using the "import" statement, the requirement for linking is fulfilled as far as I understand: https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/6033/can-a-non-gpl-python-program-use-gpl-python-module

Hence, my understanding is that this would only be allowed if the Saleae application would also be GPL, which it isn't.

martonmiklos commented 4 years ago

Hello,

Well at the moment the code in this repo does not work at all since Saleae changed their API since the last time I worked on this.

I am not an expert on the licensing things, but here is my opinion on this: I could say that I do not use any code from Saleae, I basically generate the wrapper code in a format they described in the repo you linked above (which accidentally implements the same interface what Saleae require). If necessary I can refactor the generated code to not mimic the sample codes documented by the Saleae at all. I will set GPLv2 compatible license on the generated wrapper codes (the current MIT was selected without any real reason). At this point we should be good on the development side, the GPL violations will be executed by the users itself when using the GPLv2 codes with Saleae.

Honestly for me having good interoperability between tools (and saving time for myself and others) is way more important than software licensing glitches. And this does not means that I want to leverage free software without any compensation, I started to work on these wrappers to getting familiar with the new Saleae HLA API and later create the opposite direction wrappers (to being able to use Saleae decoders with Sigrok/pulseview).