[cc-community] Open Hardware Licence
Alan Cox
alan at lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk
Sat May 9 05:43:13 EDT 2009
> APSL is the only license I know of that can protect hardware
> similar to the way software is protected by something like
> GNU-GPL.
As I said earlier chips are different. As I said earlier people
should talk to a lawyer. As I said earlier the situation is more complex
than you seem to imply. As I said earlier trying to control private
derivatives can have nasty side effects. As I said earlier for the general
case you may not even be able to use copyright in the first place.
All points you've noticably ignored while inventing bizarre paranoid
interpretations of my posts as part of the Great Conspiracy.
If you are working in VHDL may I suggest you go and ask a qualified IP
lawyer
"The VHDL I produce is copyrightable so
- Is the layout produced from the VHDL a derivative work of the VHDL ?
- What is the Silicon Chip Protection Act of 1984 ?
- What does this mean for someone who produces and ships chips based on a
variant of my VHDL ?"
Chips are special because some time ago governments enacted laws to make
the chip layouts have protection somewhat analogous to object code.
Another point to remind people is that the APSL isn't of direct use as is
even if it provides a possible model. It even begins:
"This License applies to any program or other work which Apple Inc.
("Apple") makes publicly available..."
It has a whole lot of Apple only and Apple related clauses some of which
you can't simply cut and paste a new name into but will need to carefully
redraft into a new license in the same style.
Unfortunately the licence itself doesn't seem to come with any permission
to create derivatives of the licence...
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