publishing IP

There are a couple of common licenses that may be appropriate - some of them may even be in use (modified) for use specifically with ip cores - opencores.org should have some :) (IIRC).

You could consider the (or a) BSD-style license - This basically lets anyone do anything with the code - they just have to retain your copyright notice on it (AFAIU).

or you could consider a GPL-style license - This puts several restrictions on what people may do with it - such as requiring them to release source if they modify it, and restricting what they can integrate it in to without releasing source.

One thing I guess you could consider is that the GPL can make things difficult for companies that want to integrate your IP block into a commercial product, because of the requirement to redistribute source code.

You could also just make the code completely public domain (or write your own license)- there are pros and cons to each of these approaches.

Good luck :)

Jeremy

Hi,

Try an ASCII terminal implemented on the Spartan-3 Starter Kit. Go to

Eric

KCL wrote:

Well, not a big problem. Such companies are free to contact the author for a different licensing of the same source if they have different needs.

MB

That is true, yes. It is something that definitely needs to be handled before work starts though, otherwise it's just a risk factor :) I guess it would be no more work than buying an IP core, except that there's no guarantee of getting a different licence.

Jeremy

Only true if the gpl licenced ip comes to them unmodified.

because the modified (improved, hopefully) version of your IP is not _your_ IP anymore. It belongs to all contributors.

But what are the other choices ?

You can't reasonably suggest other people to improve your work and claim all rights over what they did. That means a "use as is but no right to modify" licensing. So, no improvement to expect.

MB