On 06/02/2011 10:42, Wouter van Ooijen wrote:
>> I thought that under the terms of the GPL it was not legal to charge for
>> the code under that license but legal to charge for the cost of
>> distributing it or something along those lines (not sure what it says
>> about "unreasonable" distribution charges though)
> It is legal to charge for the product itself.
>
> Once a customer has the product, the company must offer the source for a
> reasonable fee. They offer the source on their website for free, so the
> fact that they *also* offer it in some other way for $100 is IMO not a
> violation. And when one person a year asks for the sources this way $100
> might even be considered a reasonable amount.
>
>> I'm sure they have covered themselves legally, but legal doesn't always
>> equal ethical - the folk discussing it on the thread seem to think it
>> was maybe a bit "cheeky", though as I said, I would have to look more
>> closely to come to any conclusion.
> It would be cheeky if they hid or obfusciated the source, but apparently
> they did not. The funny thing (if there is any) is that as yet there
> seems to be no user's website that offers the 'jailbroken' version for
> free. maybe that indicates a general lack of interest in PIC32 in the
> hobby/low-cost community?
>

I agree they provided the source - though I don't think that's really=20
the issue they were getting at.
More that they took a free compiler, removed (most of) the optimisations=20
and used it to persuade folk to buy the full version (seem to have at=20
least - this is all conjecture based on what others have said, and the=20
small amount I know about C32/MIPS) The only code they seem to have=20
added themselves is the peripheral libraries (I think the standard=20
libraries are included with the free version)
I guess it's down to a couple of things: whether you think =A3895 is=20
reasonable to pay for a few peripheral libraries.
Also, what was the motive behind removing a feature (optimisations) that=20
was there already? Surely just to leave it in would be easier - I find=20
it hard to see any "customer friendly" motives here, rather to persuade=20
folk to pay money for the full version. What if you don't want the=20
peripheral libraries?
Nothing against MC in general - I like them a lot, their customer=20
service is better than most, and this kind of stuff is pretty much par=20
for the course in business. Compared to e.g. Atmel though, the dev tools=20
philosophy seems a little different.
Personally, in practice I don't actually care much (and probably neither=20
do MC) - the lite version works well enough, and for more demanding=20
stuff there are plenty of other options out there. With so many=20
different chips to choose from, all with their good/bad points, I think=20
a lot of these problems become magnified by people wanting to stick with=20
one manufacturer, rather than just using the best chip for the job and=20
getting the best bits of each.







--=20
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