I agree with your understanding. I followed the same reasoning. If this data is on a public datasheet, the header is indistinguishable from one manually created from the SVD. Unless the text description of each register is considered some kind of original artwork, but that could be even omitted if desired.
Best, Matias On Fri, Jul 3, 2020, at 20:52, Gregory Nutt wrote: > > > I just looked at that header and looks like a "no warranty" disclaimer. > > Does not impose any restriction on generation code based on that file. > > I am not an attorney and not qualified to give a legal opinion. But that > has never stopped me before. > > A copyright covers the presentation of a materials, not the content of > materials. If using the same definitions as are provided by one header > file in another header file were a breach of some copyright, the whole > world would be in trouble. 'Wine' duplicates windows definitions for > compatibility. Linux duplicates some BSD definitions for compatibility > for BSD and POSIX definitions compatibility. NuttX duplicates some > Linux definitions for compatibility. > > There was a a lawsuit about this several decades ago when when Unix > claimed that it owned all of the Unix interface definitions. That suit > failed and it was ruled that you cannot copyright an interface. So we > are free to define compatible interfaces without concern for copyright > issues. > > Another related case had to do with bitmap fonts of traditional fonts > like Times Roman. Scalable fonts can be protected because the scaling > is an algorithm; custom bit map fonts can be protected because they are > original artwork. But bitmaps of traditional fonts cannot be protected > because they are neither. > > In my "legal opinion", I would think that that all of these apply. > Register definitions define an interface and that interface is openly > documented in various sources. We know that creating header files from > those openly documented specs is acceptable (we do that all of the > time). So I cannot see that there could be a legal issue with > automatically generating Apache 2.0 header files from those XML files. > > You might ask the position of the person that claims ownership of those > XML files, but I cannot see how the license on the XML files that > contain a public interface definition could limit our freedom to > generate our own header files for that public interface provided that we > do not re-distribute the copyrighted XML files. Justin certainly will > have a different opinion. > > Greg > > > >
