[LUG] Software Licences

[Peter Lloyd-Jones <peter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Neil

I passed your quires on to Paul Bender, one of the software developers (and a 
Linux user).

This is his reply: 

Hi Peter

--snip--

Ok, I've put a few comments below.  Feel free to send this on to your
LUG in it's entirety.

> ----------  Forwarded Message  ----------
> Subject: Re: [LUG] Software Licences
> Date: Friday 21 April 2006 20:15
> From: Neil Williams <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Peter, can you enlighten me on how the JMRI *software* is actually
> connected to the circuit boards that pass a signal to the devices
> (trains) themselves?

The software actually just talks to a serial port which has a network
interface device attached to it.  In some cases, the hardware attached
to the serial port is very simple.  The serial port may actually be
provided through a USB device and it's associated driver.

> Might JMRI have some sort of permission to access the interface from
> whoever creates the hardware? The JMRI site claims to try to be
> independent of specific hardware systems so presumably there is more
> than one? If you purchase one of these hardware interfaces, what
> software are you expected to use to control it? If you use something
> like JMRI yourself, does your hardware come with some form of licence
> or permission to use certain software control methods?

JMRI actually just talks to the hardware using whatever protocol has
been established by the manufacturer.  The protocols we use are provided
at no cost by the hardware manufacturers, and are open in the sense that
the published specifications are available without any license fee for
use.  In one or two cases, the open portion of the protocol is only a
subset of the commands that are available.

JMRI happens to be an open source project which implements the
protocols.  There are other software offerings, both open source and
closed source, which support at least one of the protocols.  The closed
source offerings are only available for Windows Systems.

Now, none of this has much to do with the issue revolving around KAM's
patent.  The patent in question actually has prevented us from
developing a viable network TCP/IP server.  It talks about buffering
data from the clients before sending it on to the device attached to the
serial port.  This is just vague enough that it seems to cover all
standard techniques for allowing more than one network client concurrent
access to a network resource.

I hope this helps to clarify the situation.

Paul
--
_____________________________________________________________________________
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        "Quality is a Characteristic of thought and statement that
        is recognized by a nonthinking process. Because
        definitions are a product of rigid formal thinking,
        quality cannot be defined."
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                        Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

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