ESP8266 Community Forum

Hi!

I've been looking at getting some ESP8266 modules and use them to create a commercial product. I'm a bit confused, however, on the Frankenstein of toolchain/SDK licenses. As I understand it, the SDK would be appropriately licensed for commercial use (It'd be a bit silly if it wasn't!) but I'm not 100% sure on the result of the build chain and how it affects my possible products. Anyone care to shed some light on this?

There's no problem building commercial applications with GPL tools, using gcc does not make the code you compile with it open source. You do need to make sure that you make the source of any GPL components (libraries as well although that gets a bit complicated with aGPL) you use available, modified if you have modified it.

Many of the major tech manufacturers devices have gpl code inside them, they get stung occasionally (reputationally, not financially) when they forget to publish source. Like it has been alleged that Expressive have done by not providing source of lwip module.

I would say go for it, you'll find many in this forum who are contemplating same, having this discussion is therefore important for all of us. If anyone has different information or a contribution to this point please add detail - I am not a lawyer, just a hacker btw.