Add licensing exception to linking to nRF binary blobs for GPLv3

[ahtn]

Hi,

I was having a look at the nRF licenses for softdevices and they are all closed source binaries. Since this project is released under the GPLv3, technically this prevents the redistribution of binaries compiled from this project as you cannot provide the source code of the nRF softdevices. You should add an exception for them as outline by GNU here.

[reversebias]

Thanks for pointing this out. I knew about the licensing for the SDK, completely forgot that the pre-compiled binaries might include non-free components. It would be a shame to force everyone to set up a toolchain.

I'll look into it properly on the weekend, there's a chance that it might be OK. I'm not using bluetooth (partially for this distribution reason), and no softdevice.

If you look in a makefile, there are a few low level assembly includes for gazell, but no blobs, and using the "nosd" versions of the driver libs.

[ahtn]

I think with GPL, you can't redistribute a GPL binary if you do not have the right to redistribute all the source code needed to build that binary. So even, if you have no binary blobs, the fact that you do not have the right to redistribute Nordic's SDK is still an issue.

With SDK v13, Nordic has made a move towards BSD licensing. So if you move to v13 of the SDK, you might be able to keep GPL, however, you'll have to check as they still license some of their code under GPL incompatible licenses.

[joric]

@ahtn does SDK 13 even have nrf51822 support? All samples are either nrf52832 or nrf52840.

[ahtn]

You're right, it seems nrf51822 isn't support in the new SDK's.