Licensing issue: Selling product including Jetson TX2 bundled with L4T and self-developed software

Autonomous Machines Jetson & Embedded Systems Jetson TX2
1

Hello,

we are planning to use the Jetson TX2 as “brain” in one of our products. According to the L4T-license, the license is “non-transferable”, i.e., it would be illegal to sell our product including an installed L4T (at least in my understanding).

Are there any commercial licenses to overcome this problem?

Thanks in advance for your answer(s).

Best regards,
M. Kloeppel

2

Hi MKloeppel,

NVIDIA will permit the redistribution of L4T and hence will be revising our license agreement to reflect this. You can build your product with Jetson TX2 and use L4T per the terms of the new license agreement.

Sorry for the late reply.

Thanks

3

Dear Sir.

I also have the same question. We are selling Jetson platform for commercial use.

We want to know if the Ubuntu OS need any license?

Or we can base on any agreement to get the license.

Please help me to confirm.

Thanks.

4

“I am not a lawyer.” This is my understanding of the topic.

Ubuntu itself is GPL (or some variant like LGPL or Apache Commons). The sample rootfs is distributed separately from the NVIDIA drivers which, when applied to sample rootfs, cause this to be known as L4T instead of just Ubuntu.

You could refer to Ubuntu docs on licensing, but what it comes down to is that anyone can distribute Ubuntu so long as you don’t claim it as your own and don’t charge for Ubuntu other than a reasonable packaging fee. Things you have created can typically have any license or fee you choose if it doesn’t directly change or derive from Ubuntu. NVIDIA’s hardware drivers are a good example…they are basically added on top of Ubuntu in a separate step and NVIDIA does not claim ownership of Ubuntu (and Ubuntu does not claim ownership of the Linux kernel…it just redistributes). Had NVIDIA taken the Nouveau video driver and modified it instead of creating their own original driver there would have been a need to follow Nouveau’s licensing as a derivative work.

You’ll notice that NVIDIA has contributed changes to the Linux kernel itself, and those changes became public and are distributed as free. The files which are not integrated with the kernel (the separate drivers which talk to the kernel but which are not part of the kernel) are owned and licensed and controlled by NVIDIA…the source code of those files are not provided to the public without a non-disclosure agreement.

5

Hi

We are also planning to release a product which packages tx2 running l4t.

Where can I access licensing agreement permitting redistribution of l4t?

Regards

Harsha

6

Hi sriharsha.vardhan,

Please check the licenses section from NVIDIA Tegra Linux Driver Package Development Guide.

Thanks

7

Hi kayccc,

I have taken a look at the license you linked, as well as the license included with L4T 32.2.1, and I have been unable to locate a phrase which allows for commercial redistribution of L4T, via (for example) a sold TX2 which has L4T installed along with custom components and code.

Link to the latest License: Tegra Agreement 32.2.1

It seems section 2.1.1 says that we may only use it within our Enterprise. It does not seem that 2.1.2 provides enough of an exception to allow for redistribution in a sold product.

Is there additional information or clarification available?

Thank you.

Edit: Changed ‘is a sold’ to ‘in a sold’

8

Hi PhilDawling,

All information are in that section, you better to consult with a lawyer for those legal issue.

9

Hi kayccc (or anyone on the NVIDIA side),

In your response further up the thread and quoted above, you mentioned that “NVIDIA will permit redistribution” and will be “revising our license agreement to reflect it”, however neither the past nor current license reflects this statement. Was the change never made? Does NVIDIA not actually permit redistribution, in the context of the original comment which stated “in one of our products”, not within the enterprise (which is the only statement in the license)?

Is there a contact on the NVIDIA side who we can contact? I can go through the contact us forms, but I want to check first if there is a group who would have knowledge of the Jetson products.

Thank you.

10

Hi PhilDawling,

The Linux kernel, and patches to it, are provided under the GPLv2 license. So there is no concern from the NVIDIA side regarding redistribution of the kernel source code or patches specifically to the kernel provided by NVIDIA. And the SW agreement you can see this public doc Software License Agreement

See also: [url]https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/1057536/jetson-tx2/l4t-license-redistribution-issue/[/url]