[Discuss] EOMA68 Libre Hardware Standard and Libre Software project, currently crowd-funding (deadline expires 26th aug 2016)

[Javier Serrano]

On 08/22/2016 09:34 PM, Paul Bristow wrote:
> On 22 Aug 2016, at 21:14, Windell H. Oskay <windell at oskay.net> wrote:
> 
>> Also, with absolutely no judgement whatsoever as to the merits of any given argument, it seems that rehashing "libre" versus "open source" may well be off-topic to this mailing list. No amount of thoughtful, considered discussion (nor trash talk!) that one might provide here can settle this once and for all. It has been the topic of a great many heated discussions, going back far longer than this mailing list has been around. We will not settle it here.
> 
> Thank you.  I am old enough that I am not very keen to repeat the early days of open source software quite so closely.  We open source hardware people are still so few around the world that almost no-one has even heard of it and there is no open source hardware version of UNIX to keep the dream alive.  
> 
> For myself, I am fine if people do a replace /open source/libre/ when reading my writing and I will do the reverse, then we can get on with the serious business of how to build the licensing and git equivalents for hardware.

Fully agree with Paul and Windell here. We are very lucky in OSHW in
that there is no controversy between open and free, that I can see. I
have seen attempts at starting the debate over and over through the
years, and it dies off quickly. I have seen lots of people (myself
included) talk about open source hardware with a set of arguments which
closely mimic those of free software. We are lucky in the sense that no
alternative hardware movement has sprung and said we should not care
about Ethics (or any other endeavour for that matter), and definitely
nobody has tried to appropriate the OSHW label to represent this
Ethics-free variant. So much of the controversy of the software debate
just does not apply here, fortunately. Many people with different
backgrounds and motivations feel comfortable under the same label.

Regarding liability, that's not what the OSHW definition or
certification attempts to solve. One way of tackling that is through a
disclaimer in a license, like paragraph 5.2 in the CERN OHL v1.2,
paragraph 8 of the Solderpad License v0.51 or paragraph 7 of the TAPR
OHL . This is one of various reasons to use an open hardware license
(instead of just releasing files without a license). Licensing,
definition and certification are related in that the three are tools one
uses to fulfil a goal, but they address separate concerns.

Cheers,

Javier