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raspberrypi / pico-sdk

BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
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potentially unredistributable files in src/rp2_common/pico_btstack/ #1695

Closed josch closed 5 months ago

josch commented 5 months ago

Hi,

I'm not a lawyer, so there might actually be no problem. I was made aware of this problem by Thorsten Alteholz who reviewed my Debian packaging of pico-sdk. The files inside src/rp2_common/pico_btstack are distributed under the following terms:

 “BlueKitchen” shall refer to BlueKitchen GmbH.
 “Raspberry Pi” shall refer to Raspberry Pi Ltd.
 “Product” shall refer to Raspberry Pi hardware products Raspberry Pi Pico W or Raspberry Pi Pico WH.
 “Customer” means any purchaser of a Product.
 “Customer Products” means products manufactured or distributed by Customers which use or are derived from Products.

 Raspberry Pi grants to the Customer a non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, irrevocable, perpetual
 and worldwide licence to use, copy, store, develop, modify, and transmit BTstack in order to use BTstack with or
 integrate BTstack into Products or Customer Products, and distribute BTstack as part of these Products or
 Customer Products or their related documentation or SDKs.
 [...]

So essentially, the right to copy, store and transmit BTstack is only granted to "Customers" which are defined as "purchaser of a Product". Github.com, which you are using to host this code, probably did not purchase any product, so they are probably not a customer and are thus not granted the permission to copy, store or transmit BTstack.

Or is the copyright information maybe incorrect and other terms apply to it?

Thanks!

kilograham commented 5 months ago

Also not a lawyer, but FYI: The license here refers to use of BTstack itself. BTstack is not included in the pico-sdk repository; it is a sub-module (in github) and is licensed with these terms https://github.com/bluekitchen/btstack/blob/master/LICENSE by default (LICENSE.RP is a more permissive license for use with our product)

The files in the src/rp2_common/pico_btstack are not part of BTstack, and are licensed under the regular BSD-3-Clause license of the SDK cc @ghollingworth @mringwal

josch commented 5 months ago

Thank you for looking into this! The git submodule is located under lib/btstack. If the files in src/rp2_common/pico_btstack are licensed under BSD, what is the meaning of this LICENSE file?

https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-sdk/blob/master/src/rp2_common/pico_btstack/LICENSE.RP

kilograham commented 5 months ago

the LICENSE.RP refers to the files under lib/btstack; perhaps that could be more clear.

josch commented 5 months ago

I now read that it actually says exactly that in src/rp2_common/pico_btstack/doc.h:

A supplemental license for BTstack (in addition to the stock BTstack licensing terms) is provided here https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-sdk/blob/master/src/rp2_common/pico_btstack/LICENSE.RP

josch commented 5 months ago

Closing, because there is no bug, just a misunderstanding about what source code the LICENSE.RP file actually applies to.