Common Licencing

Both Unison and DSPnano offer an identical  dual open source and commercial licensing model.  There are no differences between the two embedded operating system licenses.

Open Source License

The open source license allows users to take the software, develop an embedded solution, port the software to a new processor and deploy a system all at no cost.  The open source license requires all changes or modifications that are made to the operating system software or what could reasonably be considered operating system software be provided back to the community for inclusion in future versions.

The license agreement provides no indemnification - it is strictly use at your own risk. 

All redistribution must be done via the Planet Open Source site.  This is ensure that all versions going into the field are fully regression tested and meet the POSIX and Linux compatibility standards set out for DSPnano and Unison.  In this way, very high quality can be maintained regardless of the level of skill of individual contributions.  Regression testing and a centralized version will apply to all developers equally.

There is a community development model in this case.  The benefits of this community model are that defects and upgrades are available to all without cost.  The versions are guarenteed to be stable.  Contributors are clearly listed on the Planet Open Source web site.

Commercial License

The commercial license provides the ability to distribute an unlimited number of copies for a given product.  It does not require any upgrades to be given back to the community.  Redistribution is still prevented for commercial licenses for the same quality reasons. 

Commercial licensees are free to provide upgrades to the community at their discression.

Understanding Open Source and Commercial Distribution Differences