RE: [avr-libc-dev] Open Source license for embedded systems

[Weddington, Eric]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: 
> address@hidden 
> [mailto:address@hidden
> org] On Behalf Of Frédéric Nadeau
> Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2008 2:17 PM
> To: Sebastien Lelong
> Cc: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: [avr-libc-dev] Open Source license for embedded systems
> 
> Why don't you do like Micro$oft?, hide the acknoledgement in 
> your binary.
> 
> http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=BSD%20Code%20in%20Windows
> 
> It does however use some code space, but heck, sure you can spare 200
> bytes for that :)
> 
> I do not encourage it, but it is sure an alternative to having the
> acknowledgement in the manual.

That is not feasible. For one, look at the first page of the avr-libc manual:

<http://www.nongnu.org/avr-libc/user-manual/index.html>

Now scroll down to the very bottom. There you will see a list of all of the 
copyright holders of portions of avr-libc. It's quite a long list. 39 entries 
if I counted correctly.

Second, the amount of space that it would take up is infeasible in a small 
embedded device. Microsoft can hide things in an ever-bloated executable on a 
PC with virtually unlimited resources. 200 bytes on an AVR could make or break 
an application.

I can't speak for all of the avr-libc copyright holders, but I would think that 
many of them do not care if they are mentioned in the documentation, though 
that would be a very nice thing. Just don't say that you wrote avr-libc, or 
that you have a copyright in avr-libc (unless you actually do).