[ECOS] Licensing terms

[Paul Beskeen]

Hi Grant,

> I just got off the phone with somebody from Express Logic (the vendor
> of ThreadX), and he claimed that if you want to ship product with eCOS
> you have to pay money to Cygnus.  I've read the eCOS license and it
> sure doesn't look like that's the case to me (standard I Am Not a
> Lawyer Disclaimer applies).

Talk about FUD. You have read the CEPL correctly - I can confirm that there
are absolutely no license fees or royalties associated with shipping a
product containing eCos. The CEPL does however require that you include a
reference to the use of eCos in your product's documentation, and we also
expect that you will make any changes to CEPL'd sources available to the
community.

Note that unlike other open source licenses, such as the standard GPL, the
CEPL is not viral in nature. It places no restrictions on your own
application code, and absolutely does not force you to place your application
into the public domain.

See http://sourceware.cygnus.com/ecos/license-overview.html for more
information on the CEPL.

Instead of royalties or license fees, Cygnus makes its money from eCos by
means of support contracts, custom development, porting, the sale of
additional eCos components, eCos development kits, and associated development
tools. All of these services and products are completely optional.

> He also told me that eCOS is a revised version of another, older OS
> called Helos (or something like that).

FUD #2. I think he is probably referring to Helios and is again incorrect.
Although Cygnus employs engineers that have worked on the Helios OS in former
lives(tm), eCos is a completely new development designed and developed from
scratch.

Cheers, Paul.