Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Hi Fernando,

 

I'm not a lawyer, but this is my understanding of the legal situation (I may be wrong).

 

Many EPICS modules such as AreaDetector, Asyn and EPICS Base itself are provided under Copyright licenses that are BSD-like, and they do permit commercial use, sublicensing and selling copies of the software. Charging for an EPICS driver isn't contrary to the terms of these software licenses as such, but doing so might limit the users who are willing to purchase that equipment. Some EPICS modules such as StreamDevice come under licenses that are more restrictive for commercial use — the LGPL-3.0 that is used for StreamDevice permits a company to charge for a copy of the StreamDevice software, but the company must provide full source code, and the customer is entitled to give away copies of the source code to anybody they like for free under the terms of the LGPL.

 

I would hope that the €800 at least provides the source code to the EPICS driver and the rights to modify it and to compile it for your choice of CPU and/or OS, I would want to understand what license terms apply to anything like that which I purchased. One problem with mixing commercial and open-source software is that you can't easily share your modifications to the commercial software with other users, unless their license explicitly permits that. Any help solving problems using their software and hardware generally has to come from the company as well.

 

You should tell them if the absence of an open source driver is the reason you decide to go with some other manufacturer.

 

HTH,

 

- Andrew