Two different things are claimed on this project, under two different bodies of law, and this file exists to keep them apart. Conflating them is how a project ends up either giving away a name it meant to keep or appearing to claw back a licence it already granted.
Copyright © 2026 iamankushpandit.
The code in this repository is licensed GPL-3.0-or-later — see LICENSE. That grant is the operative one, it is irrevocable for the versions it has been applied to, and nothing further down this page takes any of it back. You may use, study, modify and redistribute the code, and if you distribute a modified build or a device running one, you must offer the corresponding source on the same terms.
The copyright is held by an individual rather than by the brand below. A trading name that is not an incorporated entity cannot hold a copyright, and a licence notice naming a holder that does not legally exist is precisely the notice a downstream user cannot rely on.
Every file says this itself. Each source file, script, workflow and
document in the repository carries the same notice in miniature: the SPDX
licence identifier, the copyright holder, a link back here, and what reuse
requires. tools/check_licenses.py keeps it that way and CI runs it. Those
headers grant nothing new and take nothing back -- they are this page, written
where a file that has travelled on its own can still be read. Keep them if you
copy a file; that, and the source obligation above, is the whole of what is
asked.
Braino! is a product of GoodTime Micro Company™. Braino!, GoodTime Micro Company™ and the game names are trademarks of GoodTime Micro Company™. The console has been renamed before; the owner did not change.
Trademark is not copyright, and the GPL does not license a name — it never has, for any project. So the freedom you have over this code is complete, and it is simply not the thing this section is about. What this section is about is whether a stranger holding a device can tell whose firmware is answering them.
You are meant to fork this. Porting Braino! to another board is the single thing the project most wants from a contributor, and the GPL was chosen exactly so those ports stay available to the people holding the hardware. docs/PORTING.md is the checklist. So rather than leave you to guess where the line is, here it is.
Rename before you distribute a modified build, a device running one, or an installer page serving one:
| Change | The product identity in include/AppVersion.h — BRAINO_PRODUCT_NAME and both copyright strings. That one header is the only place the firmware spells either, so it is a one-file rename by design. Also the BLE beacon's NAME_PREFIX in src/hal/BleBeacon.h, your installer page, and the case artwork. |
| Keep freely | Everything else in the source. Game titles as identifiers, file and symbol names, AppMetadata strings you have not changed, this repository's documentation, and any factual statement that your work derives from Braino!. |
Attribute to the author, not to the brand. A fork that says
based on Braino! by iamankushpandit
is accurate attribution and is always fine — that is nominative use, and no permission is needed for it. Naming the author rather than the company is also the more useful line for whoever reads it: the copyright, the code and the person who will answer an issue are all in the same place, and the link goes somewhere a reader can actually follow. The one thing asked of you is that you not ship to strangers as Braino!.
Contributions to this repository need no trademark permission at all. The names stay where they are, and opening a pull request grants nothing beyond the GPL terms already described in CONTRIBUTING.md.
Every asset compiled into the firmware is MIT or public domain, and the
libraries keep their own permissive licences. The full table, including the
one attribution obligation that survives (mledoze/countries, ODbL), is in the
README's Credits and licensing section.
Part of Braino! by iamankushpandit. Copyright © 2026 iamankushpandit, licensed GPL-3.0-or-later alongside the code — reuse of this document, in whole or in part, must keep this attribution and stay under the same licence. See NOTICE.md.