[Discuss] New Blog Post Up!

[Jeffrey Warren]

I just wanted to clarify that while there is ongoing discussion of how
enforceable various OH licenses are going to be, there are plenty of people
who think they're possible and workable, and have been developing
mechanisms to make up for the lack of direct copyrightability of hardware.
A careful reading of the CERN OHL and the discussions that led up to its
drafting and revision make it pretty clear that these licenses were not
developed in ignorance of IP law.

But I think your comment "...we need to acknowledge that legally (and
aiming for what you call open source) they are utter rubbish." referred to
the Non-Commercial clauses, not the legal basis of open hardware licensing,
right?






On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 6:46 PM, Dr. Peter Troxler <trox at fabfolk.com> wrote:

> Taking the usual precautions (ianal, tinla), I think there are at least
> two issues at hand. One is the incompatibility of open and cc-options (as
> you point out), the second is the incompatibility of hardware with
> copyright.
>
> (1) I guess you’ve summarized it to the point: anything else than cc-by,
> cc-by-sa and CC0 is not in the spirit of
> whatever-we-call-it-(but-preferrably-not-open-source)
>
> (2) hardware (oversimplified: “useful things”) is not automatically
> “protected” by “IP” legislation (much different to “beautiful things” that
> are automatically “protected” by copyright on publication) ... so a license
> is non-sensical (as “license” means: you are allowed to do what normally
> would be prohibited), and there is debate if “open hardware licenses” are
> legally meaningful or void (that’s what I understand from the legal
> discussion).
>
> Nonetheless, even if a hardware license is (legally) nonsense, it is a
> communication device to signal “that’s who I mean my stuff to be handled”.
>  But on that level, ie. when the legal meaning is void anyway, the NC and
> ND clauses become different animals. And that’s worth looking into. Still
> we need to acknowledge that legally (and aiming for what you call open
> source) they are utter rubbish. And maybe even on communication-face-level
> they are rubbish too (e.g. NC meaning that “if somebody is making money off
> it I want my fair share” -- vs. “If you are not able to extract money from
> your brilliant thing you’re maybe just not as brilliant as you think, at
> least commercially”)
>
> On 21 May 2014, at 23:33, alicia <amgibb at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> New Blog Post on OSHWA to clarify which  Creative Commons licenses are
> compatible with open source:
> http://www.oshwa.org/2014/05/21/cc-oshw/
>
> Cheers,
> Alicia
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