Will using APM 32 MCUs produced and sold by GEELY company instead of STM32 cause any license violation? The code I compiled for ST works in APM32.

[ACALI.1]

Will using APM 32 MCUs produced and sold by GEELY company instead of STM32 cause any license violation?

[Peter BENSCH]

Welcome, @ACALI.1​, to the community!

None of the clones were licensed by STMicroelectronics to any other manufacturer. It does not matter that the software on these clones may work in the same way. Yes, in this respect you are violating the licence conditions that are mentioned for the Firmware libraries in their Software Package License Agreement SLA0048 (the following is an excerpt):

2. Redistributions in binary form, except as embedded into microcontroller or microprocessor device manufactured by or for STMicroelectronics or a software update for such device, must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

[...]

4. This software package or any part thereof, including modifications and/or derivative works of this software package, must be used and execute solely and exclusively on or in combination with a microcontroller or a microprocessor devices manufactured by or for STMicroelectronics.

By the way, it is also mean and disrespectful of the manufacturer's work to use their freely provided software to use it on cheap clones.

Regards

/Peter

[Piranha]

Ironically, except for SBSFU and probably few other packages, ST's own attitude to thw quality of ST's firmware code for STM32 microcontrollers is on the same level of disrespect against customers, who are supposed to use it.

[Peter BENSCH]

@Piranha​ Free software and firmware is disrespectful to customers?

Isn't that a tiny bit harsh?

You are very welcome to contribute with improvements to the firmware via the Github repository.

Regards

/Peter

[Tesla DeLorean]

You might also want to check that GEELY has paid all patent pool and IP licencing appropriately, and that your products don't violate other IP holders rights.

[Piranha]

To read the licence text, one has to learn the spelling. Geely is a car maker.

[cutterhead]

think that employee at st need to realised that seggers partner with amp , so it doesnt look like a violation and seems like geehy payed their full diligence

 

 

https://www.segger.com/news/segger-and-geehy-partner-to-fully-support-the-apm32-series-mcu/

 

[Peter BENSCH]

@cutterhead Please read the text on the website again - it only states that Segger also supports those MCUs with its J-LINK. This has NOTHING to do with an agreement between that manufacturer and STMicroelectronics regarding the MCUs.

The use of software and/or libraries from STMicroelectronics without such an agreement - which, by the way, can only be made with STMicroelectronics - is clearly a violation of the above-mentioned licence conditions.