ROS Resources: Documentation | Support | Discussion Forum | Index | Service Status | ros @ Robotics Stack Exchange
Ask Your Question
3

Selling robots with ROS

asked 2012-08-31 11:04:41 -0500

updated 2014-01-28 17:13:31 -0500

ngrennan gravatar image

Hi all,

My apologies if this topic has been mentioned before. I would like to know if the BSD license would allow me to sell a ROS-based product or a modification of it without being sued? Any additional information is very welcome.

Regards,

Renato Samperio.

edit retag flag offensive close merge delete

1 Answer

Sort by » oldest newest most voted
13

answered 2012-08-31 11:28:41 -0500

jbohren gravatar image

updated 2012-08-31 11:29:25 -0500


!!! NOTICE !!!

Not all code in the ROS ecosystem has been released under BSD or similarly permissive licenses. The default license created by roscreate-pkg is "BSD" but some people do not know or do not care what this means, and they can be careless with the code they use or link against in that package.

If you are concerned about licensing, make sure that the contents of the package and all of its dependencies are also covered under the appropriate license for your application.


The answer for the ROS core, however, is YES. In fact, the entire motivation for pushing that the ROS core and most of the mantle is BSD-licensed is to enable commercialization of ROS-based robots. You can even build and sell proprietary software built on top of BSD-licensed code.

Also it might be useful to link people to the ROS developer's guide, which goes over some of these issues.

edit flag offensive delete link more

Comments

Dear Jonathan, Many thanks for your answer and links. They are very useful.

Renato Samperio gravatar image Renato Samperio  ( 2012-09-17 20:50:31 -0500 )edit

Question Tools

1 follower

Stats

Asked: 2012-08-31 11:04:41 -0500

Seen: 658 times

Last updated: Aug 31 '12