Working with open source and proprietary code

It is common for an embedded product to be built upon an open source system like the one built by Yocto, and to include proprietary software that adds value and specializes the product. This proprietary part usually is intellectual property and needs to be protected, and it's important to understand how it can coexist with open source.

This recipe will discuss some examples of open source packages commonly found on embedded products and will briefly explain how to use proprietary software with them.

How to do it...

Open source licenses can be broadly divided into two categories based on whether they are:

• Permissive: These are similar to Internet Software Consortium (ISC), MIT, and BSD licenses. They have few requirements attached to them and just require us to preserve copyright notices.

• Restrictive: These are similar to the GPL, which bind us to not only distribute the source code and modifications, either with the binary itself or at a later date...