A first: I needed information on the modbus or modbus+ protocols for work today (it’s a low-level protocol common in embedded stuff – basically a master says to a slave “Give me 50 bytes starting at offset 0x08”, and the slave does), and came across this page.
What’s particular about the page is this line, in their product specs:
- Straight forward per-developer-seat software license, no royalties or GPL
This is the first time that I have seen “no GPL” listed as a “feature” of a commercial product. I suspect that it’s important in the context of an SDK,and if it’s there it’s because clients have asked the question, but it just struck me as odd. I guess it means that
- Free Software has mindshare even in niches where you wouldn’t expect it, and
- the first reaction to Free Software is fear and uncertainty.
