PyMesh license

[PG]

Dear Pycom team,

after having red the "License to use Pymesh and Openthread", I have 2 questions:

• if I understand, Pymesh firmware is not open source?
• If I develop an open source project based on Pymesh: what are the conditions to distribute/use (not develop) this firmware?

Thanks for your answers

[nestorld]

@catalin Do you have any news about the open source license for Pymesh and what it will and will not allow to do?

[trojanc]

@catalin

The licensing isn't very clear what the future is after the 12 months. In my use case I just want to make use of it at home (i.e non-commercial) to connect a bunch of sensors and automate some stuff around the house.

1. How would this licensing affect me?
2. What happens after the license expires? You don't get updates anymore? Current running devices becomes ILLEGAL?!
3. How would you get updates anyway? Do we have to send an email each time to get an update? Or would you be able to get pymesh firmware updates OTA like normal firmware

[catalin]

@low_earth_orbit
hi everyone, sorry for the delayed answer.

We're taking steps towards open-sourcing main part of Pymesh (maybe keeping the Pybytes connection as close-source).
The pdf license was a temporary solution, to allow us to make this split, and offer you, our community, to freely build your Pymesh solutions.

[low_earth_orbit]

@robert-hh Agree that it may not be enforceable currently. But the ESP32 board has secure boot / secure flash capacity, and it appears that pycom is taking steps to remove the pymesh source from the public and only release binary versions. It's just a few more steps to creating an iphone-like device that people have to jailbreak in order to fully use and own, and we are back to square one having accomplished nothing.
I say so because I'd like to see Pycom change direction, or at least for people to pay attention to what this means in the longer run. You don't take these sorts of steps unless you have that sort of future in mind.

[robert-hh]

@low_earth_orbit This sentence about ceasing the license is practically useless, at least for non-commercial use. How ever would anyone able to enforce it? I do not expect that PyCom will do so.

[low_earth_orbit]

This also very much concerns me. Here is the link to the document:
https://docs.pycom.io/gitbook/assets/pymesh/Pymesh_Licence_Copyright_Notice.pdf

"Redistribution and use does not exceed the 12 months’ development term
(granted to the initial acquirer), i.e. from 01 November 2019 to 01 November
2020, and upon 01 November 2020 all use, including use of the
redistributions, is ceased (unless a new license is obtained)."

So, we are legally required to stop using the pycom/mesh platform after one year?? Or we must re sign this document every 12 months?

The core motivation for me to build out mesh technology from barebones is to escape this exact sort of closed-source / screwy licensing / centralized power structure that has been abused for so long by what were tiny companies and now rival governments, apple and google and the lot.

I appreciate what you have done towards deconstructing the net, but it also appears to me that you're attempting to take the same position as evil overlords that are necessitating the deconstruction in the first place, and I can't/won't support that.