[cc-community] Open Hardware Licence
Greg London
email at greglondon.com
Sun May 10 10:23:37 EDT 2009
> Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 02:19:16 +0000
> From: Stuart Naylor <stuartiannaylor at hotmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [cc-community] Open Hardware Licence
> To: <cc-community at lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: <BAY128-W445042502736AACC69361BB650 at phx.gbl>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>
> If nothing happens I will eventually let it go Public Domain.
If you are willing to put it under a Public Domain Style license
like the BSD license, then sure, that'll work. public domain style
licenses basically say "I release all rights and expect nothing".
It has never been proven that people *need* to use any sort of
copyleft license to create free works. What public domain style
licenses might do is cause a certain subset of people from
contributing to your project because they want copyleft.
But that just means you'll have a smaller community, things
might take longer, but in the end you could have a project
that's completely public domain.
I wrote up an article called Drafting the Gift Domain and
spend one section discussion the decision making process
to choose between a copyleft license versus a public domain
style license.
http://www.greglondon.com/dtgd/html/draftingthegiftdomain.htm#8_Copyleft_or_Public_Domain_
There are functional tradeoffs between them.
Many people seem to choose based off of political motives.
> The debate has been great as it highlighted the great
> divide in the validity of Open Source Hardware.
It's valid. There's already open hardware projects at
http://www.opencores.org/
They tend to use the GNU-GPL.
The question is how much will GNU-GPL protect hardware,
and the answer from FSF itself is "not much".
Worst case, GNU-GPL on hardware projects will provide
as much protection as a public domain style license.
Which isn't much. But it may not be a problem.
If the hardware source code is put into something like
a Xilinx FPGA, then the bitstream might count as an
executable/derivative of the source code, so distributing
a bitstream means the vendor has to distribute the
source code. But if the hardware is an ASIC, then the ASIC
isn't a derivative so no copyleft protection will occur.
If you don't need/want copyleft protection, then use
a public domain license.
One potential hangup that can become a considerable
problem is if someone uses your code, modifies it,
creates something that they patent, and then you can't
implement that same functionality even if you reverse
engineer it. But for a licence to protect hardware from
patent lockouts, it must apply to the physical hardware,
i.e. it must apply to a private derivative that gets
shipped in an ASIC.
If you don't care about that potential issue, and if
you're willing to reverse engineer whatever functionality
an ASIC vendor creates from your code, then go with a
public domain style license like CC-BY (and surrender
attribution on an ASIC) or use something like BSD.
> It all seems a little to close to a matter
> of faith to myself and some seem to be
> fervent others agnostic. As to the great GPL
> in the sky I get the feeling that legally
> without precedent means its anybodies game.
GNU-GPL won't provide copyleft protection
if the source code ends up in an ASIC.
That's the simple fact. It isn't faith.
And it was confirmed to me by FSF via email
a year or two ago when I was looking into
an open hardware license.
> I am going to progress with a web site
> under maybe a creative commons attribute
> licence and document all code, HDL and
> protocol in one hit.
CC-BY is pretty close to a public domain style license.
There is no source code requirement and there
is no copyleft aspect other than attribution
tag along with derivatives. But again, if the
code ends up in an ASIC, CC-BY probably won't
guarantee that you'll get attribution because
the ASIC isn't a derivative. It's off the
copyright radar, so the license doesn't address it.
If you're considering a public domain
style license, you could use CC-BY, and then
just be prepared for situations where your
code ends up in an ASIC and they don't give
you attribution.
The Apple Public Source License might protect source
code that ends up in an ASIC because it triggers on
any code that is "externally deployed" and
has a patent clause. If you don't think your project
needs that protection, then you don't need to worry
about whether APSL applies to your hardware.
Greg
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