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Open Source Project Provider (TortoiseGit) Public Release Ok?

I'm currently wrapping up a beta release for a TortoiseGit Labview IDE integration project provider.  I would like to host the entire project on Github and make the project open source for the community to fork, modify and perform pull request on.  I'm curious if there are any issues that would prevent me from releasing the provider in this manner.  I don't want to run astray of any labview licensing by making the entire provider open source. 

Obviously the .ini file needs to be signed and that required acceptance into the provider program, however, i do not see the need for the .ini file to change unless there were major release that for some reason changed the interface vi names. 

Any feedback on this issue would be appreciated.

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Hi Jed, 

I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think that there are any licensing issues specifically related to project providers outside of the normal LabVIEW license.  As long as what you are doing is acceptable within the normal LabVIEW licensing rules (which I am definitely not qualified to tell you yes or no) then doing the same with project provider code should be fine.   

There are 2 things, however, that might make doing something like this difficult.  The first is the INI file signing, but as you mentioned this shouldn't be a problem if the INI does not need to change.  The second is simply the "undocumented" aspect of project providers may be very difficult in an open source environment.  Anyone trying to contribute to the code may be confused as to what is going on unless they have access to the documentation on this community.  We can add users to this community as they join the project, but you may want to include a link to the sign up form (bit.ly/projectproviders) in your source documentation.  

Hope this pseudo-answer was at least somewhat helpful,

David

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As a follow up to this, I exchanged emails with someone at NI who is more familiar with the LabVIEW license asking about this.  His response was this:

Thanks for your inquiry.  We appreciate that you want to do right by the LabVIEW license terms!  We can't weigh in on your specific development.  But we do want to point out a few things from the license that might be helpful to you.  First, the LabVIEW software license allows you to use the software for your own purposes.  Distribution is only allowed in the form of Authorized Applications (if the license you have allows this).  You can find the terms that apply to Authorized Applications in the license.  Hope that is helpful.

I hope this helps,

David

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