But we can give them an option: a solution is to allow licence opt-outs,
like Red Hat had been able to do by themselves up to earlier this year
(but not after personal copyright from the maintainers got added of
course). This would set us at a par with commercial OS vendors. But we
can't compromise our integrity without a considerable pound of flesh. So
we charge. The figures would probably depend per deal, but it could well
be in the order of thousands of dollars. Maybe. Don't know. Haven't tried
it :-). Unfortunately that money would have to be split with Red Hat, a
commercial entity, but as Red Hat's role in eCos diminishes, so too is
their leverage.
A question which is probably out of scope of this discussion:
How do you measure RH role and hence there split of the money?
Proportion of the number of patches per year? Lines of code
contributed per year? Number of files with pure RH copywrite headers?
I imagine it will be subject to negotiation at the time. Since it requires
both parties to agree, it's in their interests to come to some fair
accomodation. It may even be negotiated per deal, depending on where the
prime interest comes from (newly written stuff, or old stuff). But as I
said, as Red Hat's role diminishes, so is their entitlement. It may be
that no deal can be made - that would be stupid for RH, but I would rather
not go into how likely I think that would be then ;-/).