Licensing

Licensing#

Re-distribution of the PeakRDL command line interface tool shall adhere to the terms outlined by the GNU LGPL v3 license. For a copy of the license, see: SystemRDL/PeakRDL

Why LGPL?#

LGPL was chosen because my intent is to promote a thriving ecosystem of free and open source register automation tools. LGPL discourages this tool to be directly embedded into commercially sold closed-source software, as that would be contrary to this project’s philosophy.

What is covered by the LGPL v3 license?#

The LGPL license is intended for the command line tool itself. This includes all Python sources and testcase infrastructure not explicitly mentioned in the exemptions below.

Many of the PeakRDL sub-commands are implemented as separate plugins which are licensed individually.

What is exempt from the LGPL v3 license?#

Don’t worry. Not everything that the PeakRDL project touches is considered LGPL v3 code.

The following are exempt and are free to use with no restrictions:

  • Any output generated by PeakRDL’s core commands is yours to use freely with no restrictions.

  • Any code snippets in this documentation can be freely copy/pasted. These are examples that are intended for this purpose.

  • All example files available in the examples folder in the repository

How are plugins licensed?#

Every PeakRDL plugin is licensed separately. If you write your own plugin, you can use any license you would like. Of course I would encourage you to use LGPL v3 as well!

Can I use this as part of my company’s internally developed tools?#

Absolutely!

Sometimes it may be necessary to integrate this into a larger toolchain at your workplace. This is totally OK, as long as you don’t start distributing it outside your workplace in ways that violate the LGPL v3 license.