5 ms·

Is this really 'open hardware'? The licence has complex and seemingly imprecise restrictions on right-to-sell. The terms even become more restrictive as the Eu

Is this really 'open hardware'? The licence has complex and seemingly imprecise restrictions on right-to-sell. The terms even become more restrictive as the Euro inflates!

progre 7y ago
Since it's very much based on Commodore's design the copyright situation seems very uncertain. The author himself seems to doubt that he can claim copyright.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Copyright situations seem pretty unclear wrt tech in general, in my personal opinion. The OP have to place certain components for interop based on technical restrictions, other details are bound by the form factor of the components themselves. In theory none of that can be covered by copyright (nor design rights) because it's primarily technical, not artistic in nature. You should be able to copy nearly all of a circuit board copyright free, only the artistic elements (logos, say) being reserved (and trademarks are probably the main restriction there). Patents can't encumber this. So, really Commodore's devices _should_ be free to make technical duplicates of. YMMV.
  - sitkack 7y ago
    Any patents on the A500 would have expired by now. IANAL, but what would stop someone from making a working clone and selling it?
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      Firmware. You can make the cloned circuit, but ROMs you'd need to have license for, I expect (this is not legal advice, it is personal opinion and shouldn't be relied on). So _working_ clones might be off the cards. In USA you can likely dump a ROM from an original board, and that might even not be copyright in some jurisdictions under right-to-repair or similar legislation. In UK it's more than likely tortuous without a license to copy to the new board; we don't have Fair Use [and] don't have rights to format shift or backup. Fair Use can work for commercial goods, but rarely does AFAIK (from reading caselaw).
- miohtama 7y ago
  How would be the company that can sue or grant a license? Commodore has bankrupted (many times)?
  - icedchai 7y ago
    The Amiga IP has been sold and resold many times. Some organization still owns the Amiga IP. (Does anyone know who?) There is a danger of them coming out of the woodwork and causing problems, I guess.
    - AaronM 7y ago
      Wikipedia claims that Gateway owns the patents, or whoever owns Gateway now. Cloanto owns the copywright's. All Amiga related rights were transferred in 2019 from Amiga, Inc to C-A Acquisition Corporation owned by a director of Cloanto. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga,_Inc.
      - nobleach 7y ago
        Back in the day, Cloanto marketed a branded version of WinUAE with the Kickstart ROMs and OS and all that. I remember always wondering if it was worth buying.
        icedchai 7y ago
        I think they still do... It's called "Amiga Forever": https://amigaforever.com/ https://amigaforever.com/
    - rbanffy 7y ago
      > There is a danger of them coming out of the woodwork and causing problems That's probably one of the very few ways to make a lot of money out of Amiga IP.
tyingq 7y ago
Having the license drive the max sales price is a little tricky. I can't tell what you would be allowed to do if you sold them (fully or partially) populated and assembled with the right chips and components.
- madmoose 7y ago
  I think it's very clear what you'd need to do - contact the creator and ask for a license.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    That might be the right answer if the creator seemed confident about IP ownership and/or was specifically showing a path to paid licenses. It's a sort of "morals clause".
daneel_w 7y ago
Open and gratis are two different things. This piece of hardware seems completely open to me, barring of course the unknown innards of Commodore's custom chips.
ekianjo 7y ago
It's still open if you can get it produced for your own needs. The restrictions only apply on reselling it for profit, which is an acceptable condition.
- MaxBarraclough 7y ago
  > It's still open if you can get it produced for your own needs No, it's not. That's just not what the term means. > The restrictions only apply on reselling it for profit, which is an acceptable condition. I doubt it. That would be enough to disqualify a software licence as Open Source [0], and I imagine it disqualifies a hardware project from being Open Source Hardware too [1] [2]. [0] https://stackoverflow.com/a/8212363/ https://stackoverflow.com/a/8212363/ [1] https://www.oshwa.org/faq/ https://www.oshwa.org/faq/ [2] https://opensource.com/law/15/2/intro-open-hardware-licensing https://opensource.com/law/15/2/intro-open-hardware-licensin...
- aidenn0 7y ago
  Or reselling it at a loss in 20 years when the Euro inflates.
cmrdporcupine 7y ago
As an outsider looking in for some reason this seems endemic to the Amiga community more than other retro systems. On the Atari ST even though it is a smaller community we have a completely open source GPL implementation of the operating system plus (EmuTOS) extensions for it (FreeMint, fVDI, etc.), and several hardware projects etc. with pretty open communities, if less of them. On the Amiga side every project seems to have licensing which seems to always be defined such that someone thinks they're going to make a successful commercial project out of it Any Day Now. It's strange.
- uk_programmer 7y ago
  It just how the community is. I've spent far too much money on my Amigas and almost everything costs a fair bit. TBH though when projects are successful they do tend to do quite well (the new Amiga 1200 cases must have sold a fair bit, and the vampire 2 cards). If you go to the Amiga meetups there are loads of people there. I don't think anyone expects them to become super-wealthy. Considering the machines are now ancient and people put a lot of effort in to keeping the hardware relevant, I personally don't mind paying the extra.
- teddyh 7y ago
  Yes! In my observations (also as a relative outsider), it has been like this at least from the early 1990s. Every little itty-bitty program for the Amiga cost money. I am also reminded of how Carl Sassenrath thought it would be a good idea to release Rebol under only a proprietary license. The Rebol project, which initially had (IIRC) enormous hype and mindshare during development, tanked, and I think this was large reason why. This is despite the time being just right for a new good scripting language: PHP and Python were just beginning, and Perl was slowly dying. (Rebol was eventually released under an Open Source license in 2012, when nobody cared about Rebol anymore.)
- boomlinde 7y ago
  Tangentially, I had to argue on a very popular Amiga forum that a guy that ported some GPL licensed software to the system should also release the source he built his binaries from, all while several users were openly mocking me for even suggesting it. It wasn't a piracy friendly forum either. They'd vigilantly delete links that could lead you to 35 year old Kickstart ROM images, and merely suggesting that someone download a cracked copy of some game they already owned was frowned upon. It can be a very strange community depending on where you look. That said, I don't mean to say that I think the licensing terms of this project are unfair. It seems reasonable if you believe you owe a lot of your work to someone else that you want it to generate some public good that will benefit everybody.

Is this really 'open hardware'? The licence has complex and seemingly imprecise restrictions on right-to-sell. The terms even become more restrictive as the Euro inflates!

progre 7y ago

Since it's very much based on Commodore's design the copyright situation seems very uncertain. The author himself seems to doubt that he can claim copyright.

pbhjpbhj 7y ago
Copyright situations seem pretty unclear wrt tech in general, in my personal opinion. The OP have to place certain components for interop based on technical restrictions, other details are bound by the form factor of the components themselves. In theory none of that can be covered by copyright (nor design rights) because it's primarily technical, not artistic in nature. You should be able to copy nearly all of a circuit board copyright free, only the artistic elements (logos, say) being reserved (and trademarks are probably the main restriction there). Patents can't encumber this. So, really Commodore's devices _should_ be free to make technical duplicates of. YMMV.
- sitkack 7y ago
  Any patents on the A500 would have expired by now. IANAL, but what would stop someone from making a working clone and selling it?
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Firmware. You can make the cloned circuit, but ROMs you'd need to have license for, I expect (this is not legal advice, it is personal opinion and shouldn't be relied on). So _working_ clones might be off the cards. In USA you can likely dump a ROM from an original board, and that might even not be copyright in some jurisdictions under right-to-repair or similar legislation. In UK it's more than likely tortuous without a license to copy to the new board; we don't have Fair Use [and] don't have rights to format shift or backup. Fair Use can work for commercial goods, but rarely does AFAIK (from reading caselaw).
miohtama 7y ago
How would be the company that can sue or grant a license? Commodore has bankrupted (many times)?
- icedchai 7y ago
  The Amiga IP has been sold and resold many times. Some organization still owns the Amiga IP. (Does anyone know who?) There is a danger of them coming out of the woodwork and causing problems, I guess.
  - AaronM 7y ago
    Wikipedia claims that Gateway owns the patents, or whoever owns Gateway now. Cloanto owns the copywright's. All Amiga related rights were transferred in 2019 from Amiga, Inc to C-A Acquisition Corporation owned by a director of Cloanto. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga,_Inc.
    - nobleach 7y ago
      Back in the day, Cloanto marketed a branded version of WinUAE with the Kickstart ROMs and OS and all that. I remember always wondering if it was worth buying.
      - icedchai 7y ago
        I think they still do... It's called "Amiga Forever": https://amigaforever.com/ https://amigaforever.com/
  - rbanffy 7y ago
    > There is a danger of them coming out of the woodwork and causing problems That's probably one of the very few ways to make a lot of money out of Amiga IP.

tyingq 7y ago

Having the license drive the max sales price is a little tricky. I can't tell what you would be allowed to do if you sold them (fully or partially) populated and assembled with the right chips and components.

madmoose 7y ago
I think it's very clear what you'd need to do - contact the creator and ask for a license.
- tyingq 7y ago
  That might be the right answer if the creator seemed confident about IP ownership and/or was specifically showing a path to paid licenses. It's a sort of "morals clause".

daneel_w 7y ago

Open and gratis are two different things. This piece of hardware seems completely open to me, barring of course the unknown innards of Commodore's custom chips.

ekianjo 7y ago

It's still open if you can get it produced for your own needs. The restrictions only apply on reselling it for profit, which is an acceptable condition.

MaxBarraclough 7y ago
> It's still open if you can get it produced for your own needs No, it's not. That's just not what the term means. > The restrictions only apply on reselling it for profit, which is an acceptable condition. I doubt it. That would be enough to disqualify a software licence as Open Source [0], and I imagine it disqualifies a hardware project from being Open Source Hardware too [1] [2]. [0] https://stackoverflow.com/a/8212363/ https://stackoverflow.com/a/8212363/ [1] https://www.oshwa.org/faq/ https://www.oshwa.org/faq/ [2] https://opensource.com/law/15/2/intro-open-hardware-licensing https://opensource.com/law/15/2/intro-open-hardware-licensin...
aidenn0 7y ago
Or reselling it at a loss in 20 years when the Euro inflates.

cmrdporcupine 7y ago

As an outsider looking in for some reason this seems endemic to the Amiga community more than other retro systems. On the Atari ST even though it is a smaller community we have a completely open source GPL implementation of the operating system plus (EmuTOS) extensions for it (FreeMint, fVDI, etc.), and several hardware projects etc. with pretty open communities, if less of them. On the Amiga side every project seems to have licensing which seems to always be defined such that someone thinks they're going to make a successful commercial project out of it Any Day Now. It's strange.

uk_programmer 7y ago
It just how the community is. I've spent far too much money on my Amigas and almost everything costs a fair bit. TBH though when projects are successful they do tend to do quite well (the new Amiga 1200 cases must have sold a fair bit, and the vampire 2 cards). If you go to the Amiga meetups there are loads of people there. I don't think anyone expects them to become super-wealthy. Considering the machines are now ancient and people put a lot of effort in to keeping the hardware relevant, I personally don't mind paying the extra.
teddyh 7y ago
Yes! In my observations (also as a relative outsider), it has been like this at least from the early 1990s. Every little itty-bitty program for the Amiga cost money. I am also reminded of how Carl Sassenrath thought it would be a good idea to release Rebol under only a proprietary license. The Rebol project, which initially had (IIRC) enormous hype and mindshare during development, tanked, and I think this was large reason why. This is despite the time being just right for a new good scripting language: PHP and Python were just beginning, and Perl was slowly dying. (Rebol was eventually released under an Open Source license in 2012, when nobody cared about Rebol anymore.)
boomlinde 7y ago
Tangentially, I had to argue on a very popular Amiga forum that a guy that ported some GPL licensed software to the system should also release the source he built his binaries from, all while several users were openly mocking me for even suggesting it. It wasn't a piracy friendly forum either. They'd vigilantly delete links that could lead you to 35 year old Kickstart ROM images, and merely suggesting that someone download a cracked copy of some game they already owned was frowned upon. It can be a very strange community depending on where you look. That said, I don't mean to say that I think the licensing terms of this project are unfair. It seems reasonable if you believe you owe a lot of your work to someone else that you want it to generate some public good that will benefit everybody.