[cc-community] Seeking open hardware advice

Alan Cox alan at lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk
Fri Aug 20 06:25:20 EDT 2010


> commercial products, with attribution.  They prefer that their logo not be a
> part of any derived works.  That is basically it.  These guys are TI
> engineers doing this project on their own time and get nothing from it other
> than the joy of helping to spread embedded systems love to the world.

That doesn't sound atypical. The logo ought to be fairly easy to protect
- don't licence the logo under an open licence. Bigger companies also
trademark logos when they do this but that I think assumes they have any
value/intent on enforcing it in court. Obvious example would be "Red Hat
Enterprise Linux" where almost all the packages are open source but there
are set of heavily protected logos and images you must replace - and
which distributions based upon it use.

> So, in other words, the docs & materials are CC-BY-SA while the IP that
> defines the board is BSD-like.  From what I have read, I believe what they
> need to do is:
> 
> (1) put the CC-BY-SA logo on every page of all materials, drawings,
> documentation, etc. and on every page of the website

I don't believe you need to go quite that far, but it is a good idea to
have owner and licence info on each document, and at least a web site
page saying the whole site is [except for the logo].

> (2) state in the front of each set of materials, drawings, documentation,
> etc. the language of the BSD-like license and what is covered by it - the
> specific ideas as expressed in the drawings and materials

That may depend a great deal on what they are. You can't generally
copyright an idea. So you can probably put the BSD like lience on the
material and it would protect things like drawings but not someone going
"oh thats a neat way to drive an XXX" and doing their own design. From
the sound of it that isn't a problem.

> I would really like to help them get their licensing correct as the first
> step to forming a "real" dot-org.  Am I on the right path?

I think I'd try and work out if the "BSD-like" bit is needed or a
standard Licence would do. It introduces more certainty if it is a
standardised licence.

On the logo side, away from the licencing question it's always worth
thinking if there should be an alternative logo that people building
copies/derivatives can used [a "Based on ..." type thing].

Alan



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