[Discuss] Publish OSHW with CC0?

[Andrew Katz]

Hi Javier
 
> On 11/05/2014 03:43 PM, Andrew Katz wrote:
> > How do you determine which objects are subject to that compulsion, and
> which aren’t?
> 
> Very naively, I would say "those whose designer wished so." There would be
> nothing forcing people to build and use those objects, but if they did, they'd
> need to comply with the license. 
Indeed - so there would need to be an underlying IPR which needs to be licensed in the first place, and then we're back to questions of how easy it should be to obtain that IPR, and how to prevent it from being misused by proprietary companies...

>Anyway, I acknowledge this is a very complex
> debate and I fully see your and Michael's points. In fact, your concerns are
> similar to mine: you fear we end up sharing less in our effort to share more. I
> fear that we are already in that situation to some extent, because we are using
> (and therefore
> strengthening) the same IPRs other people use to prevent more sharing.
> You both have more experience and knowledge on the (im)possibility of
> creating a difficult-to-pervert IPR, so I'll go with you on that.

Yes indeed. I'm really glad this is being aired (and it's nice to be in an internet conversation which is civilised!), but it's a topic that comes up with reasonable regularity. I'm still (as you know) far from convinced that it's worth putting much effort in trying to put together a more comprehensive hardware copyleft regime, until (unless) we are sure that, on balance, the good outweighs the evil. By saying " you fear we end up sharing less in our effort to share more" you’ve encapsulated the issue much more neatly than I could!

Best

Andrew