Releasing own Lua-apps or sensor-firmware

I’m beginning to see more and more Lua-apps and Sensor-firmware’s released on the forums based on my work. Let’s start by saying that all of this is great! The fact that I may have inspired people to make their own apps or firmware or modifying mine to their taste just makes me feel that I may have done something good!

There are a few ways how to get your ideas to the Lua-app or sensor, one is to contact me (here) or make it yourself. However, if you share your own changes as an whole app or firmware there are some rules we need to follow.

Basic “rules” on releases

If you are releasing for example a new firmware to a “RCT-Sensor” or Lua-app that is different from my version you need to change some parts of the files:

  • It’s not a RC-Thoughts or Tero Salminen release so you need to change the “Released by Tero Salminen” or “Released by RC-Thoughts” to for example “Based on RC-Thoughts, released by Johnny English”
  • Do not use RC-Thoughts firmware version numbering, start your own.
  • Please do not use “RC-Thoughts” or “RCT Jeti Tools” in telemetry-windows, Jetibox-menus etc.

Here is an basic example from my RFID-Sensor firmware mentioning earlier developers:

 --------------------------------------------------------
            Jeti RFID-Sensor v.2.2
 --------------------------------------------------------
    Tero Salminen RC-Thoughts.com 2016 www.rc-thoughts.com
 --------------------------------------------------------
  ..
  ..
 --------------------------------------------------------
 Huge thanks to pioneering work of
 Alastair Cormack alastair.cormack@gmail.com
 --------------------------------------------------------
 This is made possible by the original work of:

 Mav2Duplex by DevFor8.com, info@devfor8.com
 RFID by Dr.Leong www..b2cqshop.com
 Miguel Balboa www.circuitito.com Jan 2012
 Søren Thing Andersen fall of 2013
 Rudy Schlaf www.makecourse.com
 --------------------------------------------------------
 Shared under MIT-license by Tero Salminen 2017
 --------------------------------------------------------

Early on I was also pointed out that it is polite to release under a real name like “Tero Salminen”, nicknames or forum-names like “JustMe1987” is not encouraged.

Licensing of software

I release all my apps and sensor firmwares under MIT-license. That basically means they are free to use and modify to anyone, even commercially. You should do the same, or change the license to something else. Note that you cannot just copy the license.txt file I include in my releases and use it unmodified, there is a copyright-line with my name on it.

If you would like to explore different license-formats and how they are implemented you could take a look here or here. If you include any other software like Arduino libraries released by someone else you also should include full library-releases with their licenses and eventual release-notes.

Why do I feel the need to post this?

There is a few reasons. The smaller reason is that I’m seeing these modified version released in forum-threads I posted for my releases. While this is somewhat ok the next reason is not: People need support. I cannot fully support releases made by other people and it needs to be clear both in the software-release and in the forum-post. And these releases needs in my opinion to be clearly different from “official RCT releases”, meaning there needs to be clearly stated that while being based on RCT-software they are in fact released by someone else. This is a user-support question, we should not be in a situation where user will not get support when he/she needs it, right?

Keep it up!

I think it is absolutely fantastic that new stuff is coming out there. While RC-Thoughts and myself have in no means been first to do Lua-apps and especially DIY Jeti-sensors I still have to say that RC-Thoughts has the best information on these things in one place including for example clear schematics, bill of materials etc. While you can search for information in internet for a sensor there is not really a place with clear building instructions for them, I’m trying hard to make it easier for end-user to make something for themselves.

Keep up the modification-ideas, if you would like to see a new feature and think that I should put them in my versions do not hesitate to contact me through the contact page! I may not take up on all ideas, after all my software and sensors are meant to suit more than one user :)

2 thoughts on “Releasing own Lua-apps or sensor-firmware

    1. Works fine, you can always send email to info at rc-thoughts.com too :)
      You might ned to clear your browsers cache.

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