Best licenses for Open Hardware - Chiphacker

Best licenses for Open Hardware

2009-12-19T19:00:55Z

Can anyone give me a rundown of the various licenses that are well-suited to open hardware? I've designed a few circuit boards and would like to make them available for others to use, so I need to choose a license for them.

Things I'm concerned about:

Attribution. Are others required to credit me? If so, how? I know this turned out to be a big issue with some BSD licenses for software.
Commercial use. Can folks copies of my work, or not? I don't really care if they do, but I'd like some credit if so :)
Can others take my work and make "closed" derivatives of it? Similar to #2, but for when people start changing things.
How "strong" is this license? 2 lines made up by a random hacker can constitute a license, but I'd prefer someone with legal training to have looked at it.

Answer by jluciani for Best licenses for Open Hardware

2009-12-19T19:18:35Z

Have you looked at the Creative Commons license pages http://creativecommons.org ? The first three items in your list are condition options on the license page. It almost sounds like the -- "by attribution" "share alike" license meets your requirements. You can also add other terms and conditions to the license.

Unless there are patents involved in your work there may not be a lot of protection anyways. Although someone may not be able to create derivative works using your schematics or layout files they could redraw the schematics and do their own layout of the board. Of course if you have a 12 layer board with 4/4 design rules and buried vias not many people will have the resources to copy it anyways ;)

(* jcl *)

Answer by Jim for Best licenses for Open Hardware

2009-12-20T00:03:29Z

I use the creative commons license and the GNU LGPL version 3, which is normally used for software but has now been extended to hardware also. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html

Even though people can copy your work, the license will protect you if someone rips off your idea without accrediting you even if they take your idea and change it (proving this could be difficult). The license also protects against people copying your work for any commercial exploits.

As with all licenses, trademarks and copyright they are only a strong as the legal team you can afford to back them up with.

Even a patent is pretty pathetic when faced with the legal team of a large corporation. A company I used to work for in the UK had £50,000 worth of patents on a new loud speaker system, just to have some big company bring out an almost identical, but slightly different system, 6 months after. Patents and Licenses are all good, if your a massive company, for the average joe it's a waste of cash.

I make and sell all my work with both the CC and LGPL licenses - http://www.sonodrome.co.uk

As far as I know they are the most comprehensive free licenses available online.

Answer by endolith for Best licenses for Open Hardware

2009-12-20T17:04:18Z

One thing to remember is that you, as copyright holder, can multi-license things. You can release it to the general public under a CC non-commercial license, for instance, and then turn around and sell it to a corporation under whatever terms you want.

So if you choose to license your work under a Creative Commons license that includes the “noncommercial use” option, you impose the ”noncommercial” condition on the users (licensees). However, you, the creator of the work and/or licensor, may at any time decide to use it commercially. People who want to copy or adapt your work, "primarily for monetary compensation or financial gain" must get your separate permission first. - wiki

Another thing to remember is that you're only copyrighting the schematics and PCB layout. Anyone can "paraphrase" your work by re-drawing it, and it won't be a copyright violation. If you patent it, on the other hand, they can't duplicate the same functionality regardless of PCB layout. (The idea that source code and PCB layouts can be covered by copyright law has always seemed flawed to me. They're utilitarian designs, not creative works.)