Hello JP,
I would like to ask for clarification about OpenTag LICENSE, especially about these lines: https://github.com/jpnorair/OpenTag/blo ... xt#L40-L45

Would this say that the code might contain some patents? If yes, then this code might be unusable in commercial use unless royalties are payed.

Why a special license was needed when there is already a plethora of open source licenses? Is it to ensure that code can contain patents?

BR,
Drasko

In USA and EU, the OpenTag license is the same as the BSD license. In Asia, the legal systems treat BSD differently. So I wanted to make sure the whole world would interpret the license in the same way, explicitly.

Is this patent-free code or not?

There are no software patents, but there are elements of OpenTag that implement PHY/MAC patents I've written. I'm not charging royalties. My goal is to eventually have the PHY/MAC encapsulated into silicon, at which point I can license it to the semiconductor company.

Can you please point me to these patents.

Is there explicitly noted somewhere that you will not charge for royalties (like in the patent proposal itself, or some other license file)?

Or is it just that you are not charging roylaties for now, but this can change in the future?



What is the difference in this case - why can you charge when algorithm is embedded in the silicon, and can not charge if the algorithm is implemented in SW?

BR,
Drasko

In the OpenTag license it states that any licensing must be RAND, so if I ever do license OpenTag into any environment, it can't be for a large amount. You can search my name (John Peter Norair) on google patents or USPTO to find my patents.

ZigBee is an example of a stack that is royalty-bearing. It's also closed source. When you buy a ZigBee device, the stack comes pre-installed on the MCU. It actually is a very large cost addition.

On the other hand, what I'd prefer to do is something like to license OpenTag to run on the radio core of the CC13xx (or similar two-core device), and work with the main core via pipes and an API. So the licensing in this case would be with TI. Users would benefit because they wouldn't have to deal with OpenTag installation or configuration at all, it would just be ready to go, and you can put your application on the main core.

There are better ways for me to make money than to chase-down OpenTag users and try to collect small royalties on 10,000 devices. So it's not going to happen. Maybe I'll change the code to a GPL dual-licence, but I think that would actually be worse for the user.