The DM42 is not a physical clone of Free42, so.....

[emece67]

(03-30-2018 11:15 AM)zeno333 Wrote:  Does SwissMicros have the right to protect what makes the DM42 different than what a physical clone of the Free42 would be??? Some aspects of the DM42 have the right to be protected as Proprietary, right???...That being what makes the DM42 different than a mere physical example of the Free42 program????

Since the very same moment Swissmicros released a product containing a program that included a previous piece of software covered by the GPL license, they lost the right to protect the remaining part of the program they wrote[*]. That's the price to pay for using a previous program they didn't wrote but, well, thanks to it they are getting an economical benefit.

Of course, the hardware (including the PCB? & mechanical designs) may be protected, if they decide so. I doubt that the electrical design may be protected, though, as it may thought as some "generic embedded thing with an screen and some buttons", but this is only a not-really-educated guess.

Regards.

[*] With some caveats here, but IMHO the DM42 does not fit in such caveats.