[ohf-licenses] Open Hardware baby step, APSL

[luc marschall]

Le mardi 25 mars 2008 à 20:52 -0400, Greg London a écrit :
> OK, so the hardware license I proposed isn't getting overwhelming
> responses as planned. I was sick for the last week and during the
> occaisional lucide moment between consciousness and SpongeBob, I had the
> idea that maybe it's too much at once, and what was needed was a baby step
> that at least starts in the right direction. So, with that, I think one
> step that open hardware folks could take that would be a huge step in
> protecting their works for the community would be to switch from GNU-GPL
> to the APPLE PUBLIC SOURCE LICENSE.
> 
> http://www.opensource.org/licenses/apsl-2.0.php
> 
> The main issue with GNU-GPL is that the copyleft aspect of the license is
> triggered by distribution of the work. In hardware, once the work is
> translated into silicon or printed circuit, it is no longer a copyright
> derivative, and selling the parts does not count as copyright
> distribution. 
snip
> The Apple Public Source License is a copyleft license that was designed to
> close the loophole in the GNU-GPL that was being exploited by websites
snip
> The APSL closed this loophole by saying that the copyleft aspect of the
> license is triggered by the creation of a copyright derivative, even if
> that derivative is never distributed.
there're two points here:
- maximizing the number of design under a copyleft license; for this
purpose the APSL + a set of boundaries to the derivative seems to be a
good idea
- the silicon, the manufactured object from a design; what about a
counterfeit good? In this area, what does "copy" mean?