The hardware licence?

[deetsay]

Hi!

A friend of mine has a hardware project, and he was wondering what licence to use for it. As you probably know, most DIY hardware doesn't really specify any licence, just some vague handwaving like "as long as you don't make a lot of money off it, it's OK." So we were fighting about differences between open and closed ways of doing things. He wants to make the whole thing as free as possible, but he doesn't want other people to make a profit from his work either. So at some point I said:

"Hey, let's look at the uCapps projects, they're completely free, yet no-one is ripping off their stuff and making lots of money! There's only a couple of places selling kits."

So I read the FAQ here and searched the forum, and... Surprise surprise, there's a LOT of hand-waving going on here too! :-(

From the FAQ: "As everything is free, am I allowed to bring the stuff to market?" "Every MIOS application is licensed under GNU GPL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html), you are allowed to distribute the application, and you will be the copyright owner of your own code (but not of MIOS itself), and you are allowed to sell your project so long you don't violate the license, and this means that you have to publish all sources (which are required to reconstruate your project) to the public domain."

OK, so anyone can sell the MIOS source code. But if someone wants to "bring this stuff to market", I'm pretty sure they're talking about the hardware and everything, and not just about selling the PIC sources. If someone read only that bit from the FAQ, it would seem that anyone can build uCapps stuff for profit. But reading the forum, it seems that is not the case. In fact, Thorsten wrote somewhere that SmashTV and Mike have *exclusive rights* to making PCB's... But in another thread he said something else.

From the FAQ: "All the applications of http://www.uCApps.de are non-profit projects which are not for sale."

Reading the forum, it seems that you're taking this part of the FAQ to the extreme! You people actually consider it forbidden for everyone to sell these things, even single old ones on eBay! If you want to get that kind of a crazy point across, then you really need to spell it out in the FAQ. No sane person will get that from just the word "non-profit". Although I do not believe it's (legally or otherwise) possible to stop people from selling their own stuff, even if it was originally designed by you.

From the FAQ: "The purpose is to follow the spirit of Open Source in order to allow people to rebuild, modify, improve or just learn from my projects."

"Open Source" is a various bunch of commercial software makers' licences, most of which are more relaxed than the GPL. For example they might give everyone rights to use software as a library in a completely closed, non-free project. I'm sure for the moment it's working out great for you the way things are, but you're just heading for weird misunderstandings with potential future hardware design contributors as well as potential misuse of your designs, if you just advertise vague "GPL-style freedom" or "Open Source" on the other hand... And then they find out the deal they're contributing to is just an unspecified mess of exclusive rights, obsessive ban of profits, all of which is just made up case by case on the forum as you go along.

At least that's the impression I got from the FAQ and a couple of forum searches. I'm not trolling here. I'm really sorry if it came out too offensive. I am very grateful and in big debt to everyone who has contributed to designing this stuff. And I don't want to make a profit from uCapps stuff either!

I'm just saying maybe you should think about how the hardware is supposed to be licenced now, and write it out clearly somewhere on these pages.

All there is now is a LOT of references to GPL or Open Source, and then a lot handwaving about how this project is "non-profit". But the GPL first of all only talks about SOFTWARE, and also it specifically doesn't say anything about "no profits", but exactly the opposite. It's a carefully thought-out licence. You can't just take it and slap "no profits" on top of it, and expect to come out with a meaningful licence. Or maybe you can, but then you have to stop calling it GPL, and you really need to write it out, and figure out all the rules and loopholes in advance. Anyway, it sounds an awful lot like you're making the classic mistake of confusing Frei Software with Kostenlos Bier, which are two completely different animals.

People usually don't design hardware under a GPL-style licence, and I'm sure there's a good reason for that. The licence was designed specifically for software, and it works well for software. So I think my friend is going to use some kind of Creative Commons -licence for his hardware project. You guys should take a look at those... They are usually used for art and stuff. But they have "non-profit" licences --> Might be just what you're after!

[TK.]

Kepping informations consistent isn't that easy, especially because of the fact, that the wiki is currently not editable due to php incompatibilities.

However, a first try to explain my "whishes" more explicitly can be found here http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=5758.0

Please let us know, which license your friend has finally taken, inspirations are always welcome

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[deetsay]

OK, well... Clearly you want to keep the hardware design closed, and you have every right to do that. And like I said, I think the FAQ should be more clear about that.

The Creative Commons licence actually would probably be "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike", which is at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/

It's for generic art so it doesn't really fit perfectly for electronics, but the principle is:

You are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and to make derivative works, under the following conditions:

You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the name or licensor.

You may not use this work for commercial purposes.

If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.

For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.

In any case, the openness in this kind of licence comes from the fact that you don't get to dictate which derivative works are "accepted" and which are "denied". Who wants to design some crazy non-profit stuff first, and document it well, and only after that they will find out if they will even be allowed to publish it? The great thing about an "open/free" licence is that usually everyone gets to publish their own stuff under the same terms. Even if they start something and never finish it, they can still publish it, and someone else can continue on it. (yeah it's rare, but I'm sure it happens!) Still, you personally get to decide which contributions get to be part of the "official" project, but you can't stop all the other work from being published somewhere else. And the project and the changes can live on long after you get tired of the whole thing.

Of course, unfortunately the licence currently also does not say where the line goes between, say,  a "really big eBay-powered group-buy" and "commercial purposes".

And the GNU project itself is full of examples of problems you can get with a "free" licence... ("GNU/Linux"-naming, "XEmacs"...)

But the greatest thing as far as I know, is that anyone on the internet and outside it is allowed to distribute the designs, and the licence must always be present. That way you can get a pretty strong confidence that no key developer can suddenly have a change of heart and sell all his stuff to a commercial vendor or something. Or sure they can, but when they do, at least they can't kill the whole project simply by saying "All your permissions have been pulled, now please stop basing your work on my intellectual property." Because you have a licence from them. Not just "accepted". ("for now, under my terms")

I'm pretty sure everyone can still double-licence their own original stuff.

At this point you're apparently the one who has to sacrifice the most, if you move into this kind of a licence. But the same rules would apply to all developers, so given enough time, you could maybe possibly get a lot back too. Hey, you could also be the dictator for as long as you want, and then make the project "free" when you don't feel like looking over it personally anymore. :-)

[TK.]

In any case, the openness in this kind of licence comes from the fact that you don't get to dictate which derivative works are "accepted" and which are "denied". Who wants to design some crazy non-profit stuff first, and document it well, and only after that they will find out if they will even be allowed to publish it? The great thing about an "open/free" licence is that usually everyone gets to publish their own stuff under the same terms. Even if they start something and never finish it, they can still publish it, and someone else can continue on it. (yeah it's rare, but I'm sure it happens!) Still, you personally get to decide which contributions get to be part of the "official" project, but you can't stop all the other work from being published somewhere else. And the project and the changes can live on long after you get tired of the whole thing.

I think you've got anything wrong. My permission is only required if somebody wants to sell a project which is based on the MIDIbox platform.

I must highlight that this was initialiy not planned from my side, but over the last years it turned out that such an option is required in order to allow a legal path for somebody who has developed an innovative device and wants to sell it to interested users who don't have the skills to DIY it by themself.

The intention is, that even if he makes money with a project based on my platform, the he must publish all sources/schematics and in best case also some documentation which is required to recreate the project without purchasing it.

Regarding the hardware license: the Creative Common license fits very well with my requirements, especially the term which you've left out in your quote:

Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.

Of course, unfortunately the licence currently also does not say where the line goes between, say,  a "really big eBay-powered group-buy" and "commercial purposes".

yes, and this problem has been discussed several times in this forum (I'm a little bit tired to share my oppinions again and again...) - I also don't follow it so strictly like propably required, because there are just things which cannot be prevented, and things which make more fun than spending weeks in discussions about the bad guys in the world...

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[narf]

Dos this mean that If I get tired of my MIDIbox SID (what are the chances of that happening? HAH!) I will not be able to sell it on Ebay or something?

naaarf....

[moogah]

I think what it means is that you should make any decisions reguarding your midibox with the proper consideration for the people who made it possible for you to build it  ;)  Check through the sale request forum and a couple other threads like this, TK's intentions are fairly clear on the subject.