[ohf-licenses] ohf-licenses Digest, Vol 1, Issue 1

[Greg London]

Hi Terry,

(and hello to everyone who is on the list)

I've been pondering this a bit more. It occurred to me that
the problem can be fairly nicely boiled down into a simple
set diagram consisting of just three circles or three sets.

I drew it up and posted it on my home page here:
http://www.greglondon.com/openhw/OpenHardwareConundrum.pdf

It's a one page PDF, licensed BY-SA, so feel free to pass
it around. I think it explains fairly simply what something
like GNU-GPL does and explains why it is likely insufficient
for an open hardware community where the contributers have
some expectation of their contributions remaining open.

The Achilles heal is that once you convert Verilog to silicon,
it is no longer a copyright-derivative, therefore GNU-GPL no
longer applies, and therefore no longer protects.

The GPL's source code requirement prevents people from
creating derivatives and keeping them private by distributing
only an executable. The GPL's anti-tivo clause prevents
functionality that prohibits only certain derivatives/executables
from beign executed.

I think what is needed is a license the protects everything
exactly as the GNU-GPL does, plus, treats an asic built from
open hardware source code as a sort of "executable" that
requires the source code to be made available under the same
license as the original.

Anyway, I figure the best place to start is to try and
describe the problem as succinctly as possible, which I
believe the one-page PDF at the above URL takes a decent
swipe at. Then get agreement that, yes, that describes
the situation. And then hopefully the solution is a natural
outcome from there.

Greg