Hi All,
The APM/ Arducopter source code comes with LGPL (Less General Public License) with it. I am talking about both ArduPilot source code (i.e. ArduPlane, ArduCopter,etc) and Mission Planner source code.
Does this mean the source code can be 'freely' distributed, modified for use in research projects and/or sold for 'commercial purposes', "without" the consent of DIYDrones/ 3DRobotics?
Would DIYDrones, choose to change the license to GPL in future or one of its goal is to ALWAYS keep it IGPL?
Best regards,
Shyam
Replies
However, there is nothing that stops someone from taking the open source code and making it proprietary to sell. Cheerson CX-20 flight controller is a cloned APM 2.5.2 which they are selling as proprietary and their firmware is custom and not shared anywhere, but it is definitely originated from the open source version.
http://firmware.diydrones.com/ :)
This comment http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/clarification-of-license from chris says it's LGPL, but the code in the repo is the GPL which was added by James Goppert in 2011. Either it's a mistake, or the project has changed the license. I'm going to raise it as a defect, as it's critical piece for commercial flying and I was under the same impression as you. I suspect it can be easily fixed in code as chris stated before the license file was added that it was supposed to be LGPL and not GPL, so it's a legal precedent of intent.
see https://github.com/diydrones/ardupilot/issues/209
Being LGPL for ArduPilot is a differentiator in the market as all the other are proprietary or GPL.