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Best Open Source License For Hardware?

Posted by kdawson on from the not-a-core-in-the-world dept.

An anonymous reader writes "MIT recently open-sourced some really cool hardware designs, including an H.264 video decoder and an OFDM transceiver, under MIT's open source license (a.k.a. the X11 license). Now, the OpenCores FAQ recommends that people use either the GPL, LGPL, or modified BSD license; they do not mention the MIT license at all. And, according to the Free Software Foundation the GPL license can be used for hardware, but they do not list the LPGL, modified BSD, or MIT licenses as suitable for non-software. Would you or your company use hardware source-released under the MIT license? What's the best license to use for releasing hardware?"

9 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Well... by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Public Domain.

    Why? So companies dont mind making it themselves. They profit on it. When other companies make it too, they can do so without reprisal on licenses, so the price approaches cost+"token profit".

    Also, by having the circuit schematic public, hiding undesirable plans is pretty much impossible.

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    1. Re:Well... by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You fail to understand.

      Unlike software, we do NOT have the means to implement a project on OpenCores. If you happen to work in a business or university setting in which you do have limited time, then you possibly can... but that's not the most of us. The majority of people do have the ability to download a compiler for free, and write/use software.

      In order to use the big guy's tools, we need to entice them to do so: and that means profits. If they are public domained, it reduces cost and liability on these companies, in which they will want to use our plans to create new goods.

      Take a look at another post I did here to understand my viewpoint on this topic.

      That viewpoint will approach the FSF the faster we can take "instructions" and make any arbitrary objects in the convenience of our own home, with given raw materials.

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    2. Re:Well... by colmore · · Score: 2, Interesting

      One, I think you underestimate how dedicated some people can be to a hobby. I could definitely see someone contacting a university and traveling to test their improvement to some open circuit diagram. Yes, every computer owner out there doesn't have access to the source, but even with software only a diminishing minority of folks have use for the source. What is gained is the security that comes with having a hoard of financially disinterested eyeballs looking over the design of your system.

      As you point out, the latest processes and fabrication techniques are for the big players only. This is fine, because these are exactly the people who will be holding onto their trade secrets. Unlike with software, however, hardware actually gets fully outdated. The board designs of 15 years ago are either useless, or have become so commoditized that they are being produced and sold at minimum cost by countless Taiwanese concerns. It's these designs that academia and an interested community of electrical engineers could really profit from. And in the cases of things like network cards, where cutting edge tech hasn't been a driving force in sales in years.

      If someone has copyright on a hardware design and they're considering making it free, they probably have figured that they no longer have any useful trade advantage from the secrets in that design; their competitors are able to produce identically functioning counterparts to the hardware in question. It's like Id software giving out the source to Quake. It's not a competitive game or engine any more, they have nothing to gain by keeping the internals to themselves.

      --
      In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
  2. Re:Uh. Hardware is not software... by zippthorne · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yet, you still have the issue of licensing.

    You can hold the sole rights of production, you can charge people for the right to produce more of the thing, you can just let anyone produce more of the thing, or presumably, you can do something in between: offer limited rights to reproduce your invention for free if certain conditions are met, which is precisely the goal of the GPL with respect to software copyright.

    Is it so much of a stretch that one or more of the stock "open" software licenses might be suitable with zero or few changes in wording to apply to patent licensing as well?

    --
    Can you be Even More Awesome?!
  3. Re:Uh. Hardware is not software... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Copyright applies to the expression of an idea, not the idea itself, regardless of whether it's software, hardware, or the great-american-novel.

    Hardware designs are most frequently expressed in a hardware-definition language (HDL) such as Verilog or VHDL. The HDL source can be copyrighted just like a program written in your favorite language.

  4. TAPR Open Hardware License. by vk2tds · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is the reason that TAPR created the Open Hardware License. It is available in two versions - the Open Hardware License, and the Non-Commercial Open Hardware License. The former is like GPL for hardware, and the latter provides a license that can be used to allow a company to open a design without giving their competitors the chance to use the design commercially.

    It is designed to provide many protections including of the circuit designs and layouts, and patent protection.

    Darryl

    P.S. I am on the board of TAPR

    1. Re:TAPR Open Hardware License. by sconeu · · Score: 2, Interesting

      One of the presentations at SCALE yesterday was on open source model rocket avionics. The guy licensed his designs under TAPR OHL. Sounds like a good license.

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  5. Follow-up Question... by pinkboi · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What's the best open-source license to use for biological innovations and strains?

    I personally prefer the MPL, the BSD/MIT and lGPL, but would also be interested in seeing what GPL-lovers (those who agree with the FSF's positions) have to say as well.

    --
    "The absurd is clear reasoning recognizing its limits"
    -Albert Camus
  6. Cores != hardware by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Cores are really a lot more like software than hardware and GPL or BSD or whatever makes a lot of sense, depending on what the releaser is trying to achieve. OpenCores is doing pretty well.

    Real hardware is a bit more challenging to release in open source form for many reasons:
    * Hardware definitions are done in layout packages with very different file structures etc making it difficult to share designs across diferent tool chains.
    * RF and power designs are more physical implementations than schematic ones. That is, it is easy to render a schematic in different physical forms some of which will work and some of which won't.

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.