Hmm...an "open hardware" license sounds like a matter for serious discussion. Two questions come to mind immediately: (1) what kind of copyrightable work does "hardware" refer to, and (2) if the subject of the license is a "literary work," why wouldn't an existing open source software license be sufficient?
Even if one could argue that an open hardware license would protect a machine design, the question remains whether such is subject to copyright.
On Jul 5, 2007, at 5:06 PM, Allison Randal wrote:
Jamey Hicks wrote:
There are no OSI-approved licenses for open source hardware, so I am proposing this license. It is derived from the Artistic License. This license treats source code written in a hardware description language such as Verilog or VHDL as a copyrighted entity, unlike the TAPR Open Hardware License. The goal with this license is to enable the use of open source components in commercial aggregates while requiring the sharing of modifications to those open source components.
You might want to look into basing this license on the Artistic License version 2.0, instead of version 1.0. After spending several years working on cleaning up the ambiguities in the original Artistic License, I would hate to see them resurrected in a new license.
I'm happy to help. I'm very interested in seeing solid open hardware licenses enter the field.
Allison
--
Director, The Perl Foundation
Chief Architect, Parrot VM
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