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A dedicated licence for open-source hardware: CERN OHL approved by OSI
- desmap 6y agoThere are three variants and long PDFs, anyone has a summary of those?
- officialchicken 6y agoRTFM/from the article... >CERN ended up with three variants. There is a strong reciprocal licence (CERN-OHL-S), which is for designs that remain free along with all their derivatives, a copyleft principle similar to GPL. >There is a weak reciprocal licence where the design can be used as a component in other designs without the whole becoming open source, but if the design of the component is modified, that must be shared back (CERN-OHL-W). And there is a permissive licence, CERN-OHL-P, which lets users mix the design freely with proprietary designs provided it is acknowledged, similar to Apache 2.0 in the software world.
- maximente 6y agoright on - now take this to some DARPA PMs, convince them of the national security risk inherent in closed hardware that almost always comes from abroad and is for all sorts of military/infrastructure things. if they end up making a program, you'll have a fairly solid if not bureaucratic funding to bootstrap your puri.sm analog.
- analognoise 6y agoI would pay money to watch some naive FOSS enthusiast trying to pitch to a DARPA PM about technology.
- jka 6y agoA naive FOSS enthusiast would probably make their ideas available freely and openly. There's nothing preventing you from getting your wish as well, though.
- officialchicken 6y agoAfter watching this[0], please feel free to make a donation to any FOSS organization of your choosing such as the Open Source Initiative[1]. You can learn more at the DARPA Open Government website[2]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UF56umERjs&list=PL6wMum5UsYvbgCsYe_QDMtI6HZvDeZ6MD&index=9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UF56umERjs&list=PL6wMum5UsY... [1] https://opensource.org/ https://opensource.org/ [2] https://open.defense.gov/Initiatives/DARPA-Open-Catalog/ https://open.defense.gov/Initiatives/DARPA-Open-Catalog/
- analognoise 6y agoWoosh! ...the FOSS enthusiast would have to be naive to think DARPA wasn't aware of FOSS and had FOSS efforts. But more importantly - People in defense track everything - down to the wafer. Going "have you tried FOSS, you could verify everything!" To someone in an industry where we...already verify everything...would be hilarious.
- Santosh83 6y agoNow all we need is the open hardware itself. Private manufacturers simply don't have any incentive for this. It has to be state or non-profit funded, but those have problems with attracting and retaining talent, as well as the existing IP issues. Any open hardware will likely face IP lawsuits and WTO sanctions.
- Proven 6y agoNo, we need more people to whine about that even though the hated Silicon Valley capitalists did that 10 years ago. https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2016/04/28/guide-to-facebooks-open-source-data-center-hardware/ https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2016/04/28/guid...
- Rochus 6y agoThere is a lot of open hardware, also a lot published by private companies. See e.g. https://ohwr.org/ https://ohwr.org/, https://opencores.org/ https://opencores.org/ or https://github.com/westerndigitalcorporation/swerv_eh1_fpga https://github.com/westerndigitalcorporation/swerv_eh1_fpga https://github.com/westerndigitalcorporation/swerv_eh1 https://github.com/westerndigitalcorporation/swerv_eh1
- MaxBarraclough 6y agoWhat are their business incentives?
- AussieWog93 6y agoFor one, it's good PR. Linux nerds will also port and maintain your software for you, for free. Of course, it means letting the competition see your secrets, which may or may not give them an actual advantage. Both models make sense in certain circumstances.
- Rochus 6y agoSee e.g. https://blog.westerndigital.com/risc-v-swerv-core-open-source/ https://blog.westerndigital.com/risc-v-swerv-core-open-sourc...
- atoav 6y agoVery interesting I always used Creative commons for hardware, is CC in its variations not good enough for hardware? I have seen sparkfun designs with CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.
- blihp 6y agoCC is geared more toward content/documents. People can and do use it for hardware, but it's not a great fit. In the article they talk about some of the challenges like the building blocks of most electronic designs (i.e. chips, passives and other components) not being things that can realistically be covered in the license. And the fact that a lot of the more interesting 'hardware' actually needs to include both hardware and software (i.e. firmware). I'm sure patents are another area that are at least a bit different with open hardware since it's almost impossible to source a microprocessor, for example, that isn't covered by numerous patents.
- duskwuff 6y ago> I always used Creative commons for hardware, is CC in its variations not good enough for hardware? It's a poor fit. The Creative Commons licenses are primarily designed to be applied to artistic works, like literature, photographs, or music. It's unclear how some parts of those licenses would apply to hardware designs or software programs; indeed, Creative Commons discourages the use of their licenses for software.
- AussieWog93 6y agoIf you can't afford an international team of IP lawyers to actually enforce your rights, then your license really isn't anything more than a polite explanation of what people should and shouldn't do with your work. Creative Commons and its variants excel in this regard - anyone acting in good faith knows exactly what your boundaries are and they're explained clearly on the website. CERN's OHL, on the other hand, is a little bit more opaque and less well understood.
- ksec 6y agoI wonder if OpenPOWER will adopt one of these license.
- TaylorAlexander 6y agoHey this is great! I was going to use CC0 for some hardware but maybe I will use this instead.