[Discuss] Publish OSHW with CC0?

[Michael Weinberg]

I'll preface this by saying that I don't know the details of your friend's
project so his mileage may vary and this is not legal advice.  However, a
few high level points worth keeping in mind:

- CC0 (and all CC licenses) are copyright licenses.  Copyright is a
default-on type of protection, so some sort of dedication (like CC0) is
necessary if you want your copyright-protected work to be in the public
domain.

- Copyright does not protect everything. Specifically (in this case),
copyright does not protect functional objects.  Functional objects fall
within the scope of patent.  Unlike copyright, patent is a default-off type
of protection.  If you  make a functional object, it is in the public
domain automatically unless you protect it with a patent.  You don't need
to take any additional steps to put it into the public domain.

- What does this mean?  If I make a catapult, any non-functional designs on
the catapult (skulls and whatnot) are protected by copyright.  Probably so
are my schematics for the catapult.  But the catapult itself is not
protected by copyright and is default in the public domain.  Putting a  CC0
license on my schematic gives people the ability to copy the schematics
freely, but has no impact on their ability to copy the catapult itself
(because it is already in the public domain).

-I don't know what "the public domain mark" is, but if it is only
descriptive I don't know why it couldn't be applied equally to works that
entered the public domain "naturally" (either because the copyright expired
or because they were never protected by copyright/patent in the first
place) or through some sort of dedication like CC0.

On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 3:41 AM, Antoine, as a contact of a free
smallwindturbine project <smallwindturbineproj.contactor at gmail.com> wrote:

> > to release an electronics device
>
> My understanding is: as your friend wants a tangible things and its
> upstream and downstream manufacturing chain to be into public domain
> (or equivalent), then, a CC licence can not really match.
>
> From my understanding, using a open licence specially designed for
> tangible things would be preferable: TAPR or CERN-OHL.
>
> Don't you think ?
>
> Freely,
>
> Antoine
>
> 2014-10-30 6:13 UTC+01:00, Eric Thompson <eric at lowvoltagelabs.com>:
> > I don't recall exactly what he said during the interview but I seem to
> > remember that Ian from Dangerous Prototypes talked about this during an
> > interview on The Amp Hour podcast.
> >
> > If you look at the Bus Pirate documentation, it lists the PCB art and
> > Firmware as CC-0.
> > http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Bus_Pirate#License
> >
> > - Eric
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 5:20 PM, Drew Fustini <pdp7pdp7 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi, a friend at my hackerspace here in Chicago wants to release an
> >> electronics device he's designed as OSHW.  It is a pure analog system
> >> with no firmware.
> >>
> >> He doesn't care about attribution, commercial use, derivatives or
> >> copyleft restrictions.   He said he basically wants to make the design
> >> public domain.  My understanding is that Creative Commons CC0 is
> >> preferable to public domain.
> >>
> >> Anyone have thoughts on releasing hardware designs as CC0?
> >> Is there are better option given he doesn't want to reserve any rights?
> >>
> >> thanks!
> >> drew
> >> http://keybase.io/pdp7
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> discuss mailing list
> >> discuss at lists.oshwa.org
> >> http://lists.oshwa.org/listinfo/discuss
> >>
> >
> _______________________________________________
> discuss mailing list
> discuss at lists.oshwa.org
> http://lists.oshwa.org/listinfo/discuss
>



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Michael Weinberg, Vice President, PK Thinks
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