[ohf-licenses] Concept draft of "Open Hardware Public License"

[Terry Hancock]

Hi all,

Well it took me long enough to get to this, but here's my draft concept
for an OHPL.

This is a "hard copyleft" license that applies a copyleft to material
products manufactured from a design as well as to the design itself as a
work of software.

A lot of it is barely-edited boilerplate from GPL v3, CC-By-SA 3.0, and
the TAPR open hardware license. Most of that would need to be edited
further, and is possibly redundant (or even self-contradictory) as it is
assembled here.

I am particularly vague, for example, on what the patents section should
address. My inclination is to just follow suit with what other licenses
have done -- but I'm not entirely sure it can be that simple.

I personally use LyX for most writing, which is why I'm sending this as
a PDF. I'll try to create an ODF version (or text?) for easier editing.
Meanwhile, I'd just be interested in some feedback.

One rather important part of this license is the whole concept of
"design domains" and their limits on atomicity and externality. This is
important as a means of establishing "reasonable bounds" for copyleft
requirements. It also allows the license to be quite general, not having
to focus exclusively on circuit boards (as the TAPR license does,
unfortunately) or on logic designs, etc.

I realize it might be a bit awkward having design domain definitions in
the license text itself, but this is really just a convenience -- the
author can always define new bounds to suit their particular needs. But
by having some standard cases covered, we make the license easier to use
for the most common use cases.

Which reminds me that the "use cases" section is empty -- I was hoping
to list some trial scenarios to illustrate the use of the license.

Cheers,
Terry



-- 
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Concept_OHPL.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 109112 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mail.openhardwarefoundation.org/pipermail/ohf-licenses_openhardwarefoundation.org/attachments/20080102/3c41253e/attachment-0001.pdf