C
Curt Wuollet wrote:
> No Modbus doesn't require special hardware, but does have
> some interesting requirements.
When I was in Bracknell (UK) earlier this year I saw a Modbus emulator program that runs under NT via the serial port. The only special hardware requirements is the RS-232 to the "flavour of the month" serial protocol (RS-422/485)
>> Also Modbus is not an open standard which may or may not
>> require special licensing (I am not a lawyer so this has to
>> come from someone who knows this!) terms.
>
> No it isn't an Open Standard but is widely implemented and
> I have not heard of Groupe Schnieder suing anyone although
> I suppose they could.
>
My reading of this is Groupe Schnieder retain the copyright so they have sole control over the protocol definition. Placing the protocol in the public domain would mean they would loose this "intellectual monopoly", to be fair they have earned that position by good will.
Remember that the copyright to the protocol and the copyright to source code are two different issues. Providing Groupe Schnieder's copyright to the protocol is noted (with a suitable
reference) then there should not be an issue. (Providing we do not copy any of the original protocol document into the source code, but that shouldn't be hard, we just don't comment the
code ;-)
I would need to do a web trawl and see if I can get some background info on how the first PC clone got it's BIOS. I vaguely remember something about two seperate groups of engineers, one reverse engineered the API, the second group coded a new BIOS from the API without looking at
the original BIOS dump. This survived a legal challenge from IBM however many years ago (15+ years).
I need to check the Australian copyright laws, there was something about reverse engineering for purposes of interoperability being legal (I think a couple of other countries have also introduced similar legislation). So Jini and myself might be legally safe (which team are you supporting in the AFL final Jini? Bombers or Demons?). In summary there are a number of avenues to explore as far as legal concerns go.
Finally we could always ask Groupe Schnieder for
permission to write source code using their published protocol. They may give us their blessing with a few conditions.
David Campbell
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LinuxPLC mailing list
[email protected]
http://linuxplc.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxplc
> No Modbus doesn't require special hardware, but does have
> some interesting requirements.
When I was in Bracknell (UK) earlier this year I saw a Modbus emulator program that runs under NT via the serial port. The only special hardware requirements is the RS-232 to the "flavour of the month" serial protocol (RS-422/485)
>> Also Modbus is not an open standard which may or may not
>> require special licensing (I am not a lawyer so this has to
>> come from someone who knows this!) terms.
>
> No it isn't an Open Standard but is widely implemented and
> I have not heard of Groupe Schnieder suing anyone although
> I suppose they could.
>
My reading of this is Groupe Schnieder retain the copyright so they have sole control over the protocol definition. Placing the protocol in the public domain would mean they would loose this "intellectual monopoly", to be fair they have earned that position by good will.
Remember that the copyright to the protocol and the copyright to source code are two different issues. Providing Groupe Schnieder's copyright to the protocol is noted (with a suitable
reference) then there should not be an issue. (Providing we do not copy any of the original protocol document into the source code, but that shouldn't be hard, we just don't comment the
code ;-)
I would need to do a web trawl and see if I can get some background info on how the first PC clone got it's BIOS. I vaguely remember something about two seperate groups of engineers, one reverse engineered the API, the second group coded a new BIOS from the API without looking at
the original BIOS dump. This survived a legal challenge from IBM however many years ago (15+ years).
I need to check the Australian copyright laws, there was something about reverse engineering for purposes of interoperability being legal (I think a couple of other countries have also introduced similar legislation). So Jini and myself might be legally safe (which team are you supporting in the AFL final Jini? Bombers or Demons?). In summary there are a number of avenues to explore as far as legal concerns go.
Finally we could always ask Groupe Schnieder for
permission to write source code using their published protocol. They may give us their blessing with a few conditions.
David Campbell
_______________________________________________
LinuxPLC mailing list
[email protected]
http://linuxplc.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxplc