EULA and using the code from the samples in open source software

svennevs · December 8, 2017, 1:07pm

I read through the EULA agreement a couple of times (http://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/eula/index.htm), but it isn’t clear to me what the use of the sample code is governed by. Number 19 at the end was the only real mention of anything related to samples, but I don’t think that’s even referring to the same thing as the CUDA sample code that comes with the installation:

Licensee’s use of the Visual Studio Setup Configuration Samples is subject to the following license:

The MIT License (MIT)
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction,
including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge,
publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software,
and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so,
subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included
in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Whereas the samples themselves just say

/**
 * Copyright 1993-2017 NVIDIA Corporation.  All rights reserved.
 *
 * Please refer to the NVIDIA end user license agreement (EULA) associated
 * with this source code for terms and conditions that govern your use of
 * this software. Any use, reproduction, disclosure, or distribution of
 * this software and related documentation outside the terms of the EULA
 * is strictly prohibited.
 *
 */

So for example, assuming I left the copyright disclaimer at the top of a file that was basically just a transcription of the convolutionSeparable code into the context of the framework I have written, what does the EULA say about this?

I guess I just don’t understand how this fits in with respect to the intended license of my library, which is BSD-3 clause. What exactly is outside the terms of the EULA? Like I’m not trying to make a profit off of this library, and it’s stated very clearly where the code comes from / who retains the rights to it (NVIDIA).

So if somebody did want to use my code for a derived work with the intent of getting money for a product, then they might have legal issues they would need to deal with I suppose, but am I violating the EULA by including the (barely modified) sample code in my library?

Thank you for any thoughts!