[Discuss] [Open Manufacturing] lawyers confirm that lawyering open source hardware is hard

[alicia]

Thanks for passing this along!


On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 6:53 AM, Matt Maier <blueback09 at gmail.com> wrote:

> One of the things that seems to best define "open source hardware" is that
> its name is taken from a parallel motivation to open source software,
> rather than from an actual licensing framework.
>
> Using copyright to control what happens with software is relatively
> straight forward once people agree on standardized clauses. There is
> nothing in the legal world that does the same thing for hardware.
>
> We've been saying that in the open source hardware community for a while
> (probably forever) but now it's been confirmed by real, live lawyers.
>
> http://opensource.com/law/14/5/legal-issues-open-data-open-hardware
>
> *"Drafting and using open licenses for data and hardware presents both
> familiar old challenges (like license proliferation) and new challenges
> (like less developed legal frameworks and different production models).
> About thirty people working in these areas recently gathered (under the
> umbrella of the FSF-E's "European Legal Network"
> <http://fsfe.org/activities/ftf/network.en.html>) to discuss the latest
> work in these areas under the Chatham House Rules
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_House_Rule>"*
>
> *" In hardware, one of my key takeaways from the event is that there are
> so many different things going on—different technologies, different
> motivations for creation—on that these instincts to simplify and unify may
> lead us astray. We don't want to try to fit round mechanical pegs into
> square chip design holes, for example"*
>
>
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