OPENCORES.ORG

nussgipfel at brain4free.org wrote:

Regarding licensing to use for a HW design, I believe if none of the 
licences that are out there satisfy you, then you could actually license 
your work under a new license you come up with.

I do not really know much about this, but I don't think there is an 
authority that keeps or manages "licences", like they do patents. 

If the GPL license is not good for you, modify it to include what you 
want, and distribute your work with that new license.

The good thing  about GPL and other "mature" licenses is that they've 
had legal experience and add the things needed to achieve their goals 
based on te experience they have. If you write your oun license it will 
probably have more "gray" areas, more holes, etc.

The good thing is that in a new license you could specify "what" you 
want whoever uses your library to give back. It probably isn't money, I 
believe you're more interested in that more IP and "know-how" are given 
back. But you could say that if a company does not want to provide 
their work back they must donate X amount of money to OpenCores.  

Specify this in detail and distribute your product with that license. It 
might grow and mature to become the next de-facto open license for 
HW designs.

Take care, Guillermo Guichal  

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Graham Seaman<graham@o...> 
To: 
Date: Thu Aug  2 15:52:07 CEST 2007 
Subject: [oc] GPLv3 usable for open HW 

> nussgipfel at brain4free.org wrote: 
> > hi everybody 
> > 
> > i know that the cores mailinglist is not the best place for 
> this 
> > discussion but on opencores there is no better list and any 
> other 
> > place/project on the net is more or less sleeping (the license 
> > disussion on opencollectors.org is death since 3 years...) 
> I closed the mailing list when I realised no-one was seriously 
> interested in 
> the topic and I couldn't be bothered dealing with the spam levels 
> for a dying 
> list. 
> Richard's point that the bsd is good enough is true in one way: if 
> your goals 
> are those of the bsd, then you don't need a special license for 
> hardware, use 
> the bsd or similar. It's only if you want something more that you 
> have 
> problems; and then the problems aren't fundamentally legal (the 
> odds on open 
> source designers actually sueing any big manufacturer are tiny) but 
> social: 
> what do you want to use the license to push users towards doing, 
> and how 
> practical is it. For me it was always providing end user 
> repair/interfacing 
> information with the manufactured end device, but most people seem 
> to have 
> other goals more closely connected with the source of the design 
> (eg. 
> requiring publishing of derivatives) which are the same as those of 
> free 
> software writers. I always had trouble understanding quite how 
> that's 
> supposed to work for hardware designs. And also whether there is 
> such a thing 
> as a generic 'hardware design' which a single license will always 
> fit. 
> If you want a license discussion mailing list back, I don't mind 
> doing it, if 
> people have something new to say :-) 
> Graham 
> > 
> > i'm working on a new fpga integrator board (small board for 
> development 
> > and to be integrated into the final product). in these context 
> i gone 
> > through all the licenses published on opensource.org last week 
> to find 
> > one that is usable for open/free hardware, like schematics, 
> pcb files 
> > and production data. 
> > 
> > it was a bit frustrating, because all these software guys only 
> thing 
> > about software and none of theme thinks beyond one's own nose 
> :-) 
> > 
> > the traditional way is to use the creative commons license for 
> these 
> > things i want to license. during my search i realised that the 
> new 
> > GPLv3 is now usable "for software and any other 
> work". 
> > 
> > my idea is now to use the (L)GPLv3 for my whole board, from 
> schematic to 
> > the board support software. 
> > 
> > my question now and the reason why i write here is: 
> > 
> > have i understood the new GPLv3 right? is it realy so general 
> applicable 
> > as i think? 
> > 
> > it would be nice to have a short discussion about these with 
> people who 
> > read some parts of the new (L)GPLv3. 
> > 
> > greetings 
> > christoph zimmermann 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > _______________________________________________ 
> > http://www.opencores.org/mailman/listinfo/cores 
> 
> 