[ohf-licenses] GPL-Affero license

[Greg London]

So, I emailed the Free Software Foundation and told
them about the problems with using GNU-GPL for hardware.
They recommended I look at the Affero GPL license.

http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/agpl-3.0.html/

I haven't read through all of it, but the preamble
sounds like it was meant to address the same GPL
loophole that the Apple Public Source License closes,
i.e. modifications are kept local on a server,
the derivative is not distributed.

So, it may be that open hardware projects could use the
Affero GPL.

Also, I was thinking that the functional boundary that
I was trying to define might actually come naturally out
of having hardware design content in different files.
It's not as clearly delineated as coming out and saying
the boundary stops "here", but it might be enough that
one can separate a free fifo design from the rest of
the chip.

I'll have to give it a read, but using a GNU license is
probably going to have a bit more weight behind it for
getting people on board to use the license for their
open hardware projects.

Greg