When it comes to NETMF and Gadgeteer, GHI Electronics has two different offer types, premium and OSHW. The premium offers are for companies needing a complete, stable solution. On the other hand, the OSHW (Open Source Hardware Offers) are made completely open, hardware and software. Companies have the option of using the GHI hardware as is or take the sources and modify as necessary. There is no royalty or restrictions on using any of the hardware or software files, even in commercial products. This is our way for giving back to the NETMF and Gadgeteer community.
An example of the flexibility in having an open source hardware is shown in the work of NicolasG who made the necessary changes to use the free GCC compiler to build the firmware. He even updated the code base for NETMF 4.2 to NETMF 4.3 as well. And as if this was not challenging enough, he extended the firmware with quadrature encoder library! By the Apache2 licence, NicolasG didn’t have to share any of his work back but he nicely decided to do so.
Original post and source code http://www.tinyclr.com/forum/topic?id=10015
Learn more about NETMF: http://www.ghielectronics.com/products/dotnet-micro-framework
GHI Electronics NETMF offer types: http://www.ghielectronics.com/offers
Extending the software without recompiling the firmware: http://www.tinyclr.com/forum/topic?id=10669