Questions about OpenBMC

[Joseph Reynolds]

On 2/13/23 9:26 PM, Angela_Wang at compal.com wrote:
> Dear Sir or Madam, Greetings. We are interested in incorporating 
> OpenBMC into our commercial product/service, and we are studying 
> OpenBMC’s licensing policy as attached, which is downloaded from 
> https: //github. com/openbmc/docs/blob/master/LICENSE. 
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> Dear Sir or Madam,
>
> Greetings. We are interested in incorporating OpenBMC into our 
> commercial product/service, and we are studying OpenBMC’s licensing 
> policy as attached, which is downloaded from 
> https://github.com/openbmc/docs/blob/master/LICENSE.
>
> To make sure we understand the terms and conditions correctly, may we 
> seek your clarification for below 2 points?
>
> 1.*_Logo_*: in Section 2-b-2 it says “Patent and trademark rights are 
> not licensed under this Public License.”, thus to our understanding, 
> we (licensee) are not allowed to use OpenBMC’s logo because the logo 
> is one kind of trademark and belongs to the licensor.
>
...snip...

I understand projects downstream from OpenBMC (products or services) are 
allowed to use the OpenBMC logo to celebrate the fact that it is "Based 
on OpenBMC" (but I cannot find any statement to that effect).  So I 
don't know the answer.  OpenBMC's controlling Technical Charter is here: 
https://www.openbmc.org/
OpenBMC's Charter mentions licensing and also references the OpenBMC 
"technical steering committee" (TSC), who can help answer questions 
about licensing.

Finally, I think the intention is for downstream projects to replace the 
logo with their own logo.  Asking the Web development team may help.
https://github.com/openbmc/openbmc/blob/master/README.md#contact
Email works, and also consider quicker feedback.  For example, ask the 
Web development how to replace the logo in Discord > OpenBMC > #webui 
channel


> 2.*_Pricing_*: from Section 2-b-3 we understand that we are allowed to 
> sell our commercial product/service which incorporates GitHub’s 
> OpenBMC code on a royalty-free basis. There is no need to report to 
> GitHub our sales amount, and GitHub will not audit our sales record 
> either.  As for the pricing listed in _https://github.com/pricing 
> <https://github.com/pricing>_, it refers to the extra technical 
> support provided by GitHub, and we will need to pay _only if_ we need 
> these extra technical support service from GitHub. *_Is this 
> understanding correct? Please correct me if I am wrong._*
>

That matches my understanding of the intention of the OpenBMC project.  
Pursuant to my previous statement, although I participate in my 
company's license compliance process, please note I am not an attorney, 
so this is not legal advice.
When you pick up the OpenBMC project and use it for yourself, you are 
responsible to comply with all of the open source software licenses for 
components built into your firmware image, whether they are from the 
OpenBMC project itself or from projects they bring in (like the Linux 
kernel, openssl, glibc, etc.)

The Yocto process offers help to get the list of packages, versions, and 
licenses. Ref:
https://docs.yoctoproject.org/dev-manual/common-tasks.html#maintaining-open-source-license-compliance-during-your-product-s-lifecycle


I hope this helps.

Joseph

> Your response is appreciated.
>
> Regards,
>
> Angela
>
...snip...