Hi,

I am a student and in a project i have to implement a hierarchical scheduler in using FreeRTOS.
We will be doing some changes to the kernel also to accomplish it.

I am black about the license knowledge. I read the license policy. I am not very clear about the following matters:

1. Our implementations will be open source or not?
2. Can we distribute our implementation (source code) at FreeRTOS website ?
if yes then : 2.1. Can we distribute it as a part of FreeRTOS or as a separate plugin?
if no then : 2.2. Can we distribute it at our own website?
3. Is FreeRTOS owned by the company(like google chrome: which is open source but
company will not distribute any kind of patches from others) or is it totally free.

We really want to contribute to the FreeRTOS. Please answer these questions. I will be obliged.

best regards

“1. Our implementations will be open source or not?”

The FreeRTOS license is very liberal, and only effects changes and/or additions to the scheduler itself. In your case it sounds like your modifications are directly related to the scheduler, and therefore will be open source.

“ 2. Can we distribute our implementation (source code) at FreeRTOS website ?
if yes then : 2.1. Can we distribute it as a part of FreeRTOS or as a separate plugin?
if no then : 2.2. Can we distribute it at our own website?
”

It is unlikely that this type of change would get its way into the core kernel code, but you can still distribute it on the FreeRTOS web site by using the FreeRTOS Interactive forums. See http://interactive.freertos.org . You can also distribute it on your own web site without having to worry about any licensing issue.s

“ 3. Is FreeRTOS owned by the company(like google chrome: which is open source but
company will not distribute any kind of patches from others) or is it totally free.
”

I'm not sure I understand the question. The IP is owned by my company - Real Time Engineers Ltd - but it is also completely free. I don't see these as being conflicting attributes. The code base origin and quality is tightly controlled to ensure people have a good experience, and to ensure that commercial licenses can be sold where appropriate. See:

http://www.freertos.org/differences-between-officially-supported-and-contributed-FreeRTOS-code.html

Regards.