Request: ZMK Firmware Project (mechanical keyboards)

[petejohanson]

• Website: https://zmkfirmware.dev/
• License: MIT

We have been developing a new MIT licensed firmware for mechanical
keyboards based on the Zephyr RTOS. In particular, the goal is to
have a firmware with solid BLE support baked in.

We are targetting supporting a wide variety of hardware, using
the broad support the upstream Zephyr project has. Currently,
we support two "Pro-Micro Footprint Compatible" boards, and
several users have already gotten the firmware working using
Adafruit Feather boards.

In order to support a variety of PCBs that accept one of those
smaller daughter boards (of which support for others is planned),
we ideally will end up with:

<# of supported MCU boards > x < # of PCB daughter boards>

unique product IDs, which is why this request includes a range.

[cuvoodoo]

I can't pre-allocate a range of USB IDs for an unknown number of devices due to the risk of sub-allocating some of them without me being able to ensure it respects our requirements and the purpose they have been allocated for.
Since this is about a single firmware providing the same functionality, one USB ID should be enough. You can still figure out the actual board using USB strings or other USB configuration details.
More importantly, the LICENSE file is present, but a lot of the source files are missing the copyright notice (authors and dates), and the actual license (SPDX-License-Identifier is enough). This would clearly identify which file is under which license, particularly when the project is re-used/mixed by others. Some files are actually already under another license (Apache-2.0).

[petejohanson]

@cuvoodoo Understood on the range, and the risk of sub-allocating. I really appreciate the intention going into this.

I've just pushed an update to the branch to just request the one ID, next in the list.

Regarding the license inconsistency, I have an existing issue zmkfirmware/zmk#30 to work on adding checks for missing/inconsistent headers during PR process. Is having that fixed first a hard requirement for allocating the ID?

Thanks again!

[cuvoodoo]

Is having that fixed first a hard requirement for allocating the ID?

Mixing licenses is not an issue (as long s they are open source and compatible). And the issue is not (only) about PR, but also about the already existing files.
Our main requirement to allocate a USB PID is to have the project under an open source license. This includes applying the license correctly, i.e. having the corresponding copyright notices in the source files.

[petejohanson]

@cuvoodoo Can we please revisit getting this assigned? We've drastically improved the copyright and license headers to be clearer, etc.

Thanks.