I'd encourage you to go and read up on our discussions on this in the past. Nothing has really changed since we last went over this.

may the search function be with me

well.. from what i can see there is one opinion that says leave it.... and some that go completely the other way...

So go for it then, but best of luck in finding someone at Freescale that who even know what you are asking about.

well.. they must have the stuff on disc somewhere...

anyway.. fired them an e-mail

Doubt Freescale do. Even if they do, it'll be next to impossible for them to find it.

well... at least it's a try... i guess that no one else has the source...

if hugo or some other have keept a copy of the source the problem is that smaller... then i only have to ask them about the getting the rights to the source and not have them to dig for some disc deep in some old archive

That is the problem. They don't have the right to give out the source. Those rights were part of the empeg company which has been bought and passed on several times now. The current owner of the empeg IP is probably Freescale.

Yeh, but it would be more easy if the problem is just to get the IP...

A bigger problem would be for freescale both have to give the IP and dig out a disc with the source

I think you're flogging a dead horse to be honest.

or an expensive one :-D

Let's not be too negative here. In the past, people have talked about getting hold of the empeg source code and doing something with it. But they've only talked about it; they've done nothing.

By sending an email to Freescale, Boelle is infinitely further advanced than anyone in the past. Let's see if he can run it down properly.

Who knows, if he gets back "yeah, you can use the IP, but we can't find the source code", then all we have to do is see if any of the original team have actually got a copy of the source code that they'd forgotten about. I know that I (unfortunately) don't have a copy.

Whatever happens, he's still put more effort into it than most people...

thanks roger

I see it this way... why not spend 5 min on an e-mail... worst case is that they reply that they will not give away the rights... but maybe they say go ahead... or that they want some money for the rights...

in any case it only took me 5 min to ask

but i like to be one step ahead.. what if they just give away the rights? should the source then be complete free or should there be some kind of control?

It'd be easiest for them (as well as, fortunately, most convenient for us) if they gave it away under one of the standard Open Source licences: MIT, BSD, LGPL, or GPL. Releasing it as GPL would mean nobody could make closed-source proprietary versions of it, a restriction which could conceivably appeal to them. On the other hand, it's not like Freescale make money by selling software in the first place, let alone this particular software, so they might not mind releasing it under MIT or BSD. In particular, even though an Empeg itself contains no Freescale products, Freescale might be persuaded that the more open-source embedded software is out there, the more people will buy embedded chips of all varieties, including theirs.

You should bear in mind that the actual car-player v2 and v3 releases did contain some code which Freescale either won't have, or couldn't give away if they did: particularly, the MP3 and WMA decoders. So whatever they gave us might not build out-of-the-box, nor contain all the v2 or v3 functionality if it did. But at least for MP3, there are open-source alternatives which the community could then patch in.

If they're amenable, you'll probably then need a volunteer to go through the source code (under Freescale NDA) to remove all the bits Freescale can't give out. I'd be happy to do that, if it came to it.

Peter

Well done for asking Boelle, while it may still lead to nothing, it's just a first step to who knows what!

Apologies to the old hands who've discussed this before, I was just curious, even more curious now!

Hugh

well.. i will keep everyone posted if they ever responds...

but whats the difference between the different license forms?

Much too complex to explain here. But hopefully Freescale has lawyers who know about this stuff.

Peter

damn... that was a lot of different license forms.. i was trying to find one that gave us the rights to do whatever we want with the source and that prevents anyone to make a patent based on stuff we do with the code

but i'm reading on...

been reading a bit. BSD seems the best option. No one can make money or even mention another name... like we cant write freescale anywhere without there accept..

Huh? Don't understand what you wrote there.

The BSD license allows you to reuse the code in a commercial product.

There is nothing stopping you from making money from open source code.

yeah... but from what i read you are not allowed to mention freescale without their accept

on the other hand if we ever get so crazy to make an mk3 others cant mention our name and profit on it

but i might be wrong

No. The BSD license basically insists you mention the authors of the portions of code you're using. There are no restrictions apart from that. If somebody integrates it into another product then they aren't under any obligation to release their code.

GPL licensing for the code would be better IMO.

i have to agree on that one

So... nobody wants the dashboard?

Rob

You know I want it, Rob. Unfortunately, getting it over here would be a pain.

Likewise...