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Best Open Source License For Hardware?

Posted by kdawson on Sun Feb 10, 2008 05:46 PM
from the not-a-core-in-the-world dept.
Hardware Hacking Hardware
An anonymous reader writes "MIT recently open-sourced some really cool hardware designs, including an H.264 video decoder and an OFDM transceiver, under MIT's open source license (a.k.a. the X11 license). Now, the OpenCores FAQ recommends that people use either the GPL, LGPL, or modified BSD license; they do not mention the MIT license at all. And, according to the Free Software Foundation the GPL license can be used for hardware, but they do not list the LPGL, modified BSD, or MIT licenses as suitable for non-software. Would you or your company use hardware source-released under the MIT license? What's the best license to use for releasing hardware?"
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Submission: What's the best open source license for hardware? by Anonymous Coward
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  • Well... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Creepy Crawler (680178) on Sunday February 10 2008, @05:49PM (#22373792)
    Public Domain.

    Why? So companies dont mind making it themselves. They profit on it. When other companies make it too, they can do so without reprisal on licenses, so the price approaches cost+"token profit".

    Also, by having the circuit schematic public, hiding undesirable plans is pretty much impossible.

    • Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Whiney Mac Fanboy (963289) * <whineymacfanboy@gmail.com> on Sunday February 10 2008, @06:02PM (#22373944) Homepage Journal
      Public Domain.

      Well, it depends on your motivation. If you want your designs used as widely as possible, go with Public Domain or a BSD style license.

      However, this allows others to take your work & extend it without releasing the improvements back to the community (a good example of this is Apple's treatment of Darwin)

      If you want to ensure that any improvements to your hardware design remain open, go with the GPL.
      • Software is different. It can be copied without detriment. The modifying of one can benefit many.

        Hardware like ASICs (NOT fpga's) requires rather specialized equipment. Even etched boards are expensive unless one has them mass-produced.

        When it comes to hardware, there is rather high climb to approach industrial standards. Having them use their industrial methods to leverage our technology is just smart. I sure couldn't afford a 100 nm fab by myself, or with a group of friends.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Creepy Crawler (680178)
            You fail to understand.

            Unlike software, we do NOT have the means to implement a project on OpenCores. If you happen to work in a business or university setting in which you do have limited time, then you possibly can... but that's not the most of us. The majority of people do have the ability to download a compiler for free, and write/use software.

            In order to use the big guy's tools, we need to entice them to do so: and that means profits. If they are public domained, it reduces cost and liability on these

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by colmore (56499)
              One, I think you underestimate how dedicated some people can be to a hobby. I could definitely see someone contacting a university and traveling to test their improvement to some open circuit diagram. Yes, every computer owner out there doesn't have access to the source, but even with software only a diminishing minority of folks have use for the source. What is gained is the security that comes with having a hoard of financially disinterested eyeballs looking over the design of your system.

              As you point
      • However, this allows others to take your work & extend it without releasing the improvements back to the community (a good example of this is Apple's treatment of Darwin)
        so, I tried to find something wrong with "Apple's treatment of Darwin." I failed. My googlefu didn't work this time. Would you mind explaining why it's wrong? I'm not sure I've heard anything wrong about it before. The only thing I've heard are rumors of Apple stopping the releases of Darwin. But, it seems they released the Leopard eq

      • Re:Well... (Score:4, Informative)

        by abigor (540274) on Sunday February 10 2008, @09:46PM (#22375434)

        However, this allows others to take your work & extend it without releasing the improvements back to the community (a good example of this is Apple's treatment of Darwin)
        Here's the Darwin source: http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/ [apple.com] You are free to use it as you wish, as the APSL is a Free Software license. You'll find launchd in there as well, the successor to inetd and friends, created by Apple and released as free software.
    • Unfortunately, because of the Berne Convention, creating something as a public domain work is not normally possible. By legal definition, in most countries, items can only enter the public domain after their copyright has expired, which takes decades. Creative Commons has a license that works in the spirit of public domain, but it has never been tested in court. I'm a big fan of the concept of public domain, but the obstacles to its application to new works are almost insurmountable.
      • How about this? How is it no different?
        ____

        1. I hold the (copyright/patent) on this idea.
        2. The allowance of these rights are extended to everybody in any country, regardless of motive or profit.
        3. There is no royalty or cost in using them, by themselves, or in derivative works.
        4. This allowance of rights is unrevokable, and will exist as long as this work is protected by said rights.
        5. The purpose of this license is to mimic the Public Domain in locales in which it is not expressly allowed.
        6. In countries
        • Since you ask, the primary difference is this:

          1. I hold the (copyright/patent) on this idea.


          It is all but impossible to disclaim copyright, which is the core concept of public domain. On the surface what you suggest seems like an adequate substitute for most purposes, but IANAL.

      • Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Pharmboy (216950) on Sunday February 10 2008, @07:43PM (#22374678) Journal
        You can always license it under the WTFPL [wikipedia.org], whose terms are quite simple:
        --------
        DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE
        Version 2, December 2004

        Copyright (C) 2004 Sam Hocevar
        14 rue de Plaisance, 75014 Paris, France
        Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim or modified
        copies of this license document, and changing it is allowed as long
        as the name is changed.

        DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE
        TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

        0. You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO.
        --------

        I would say that is a relatively free license, and it satisfies your scenario, if it really *is* a problem.
    • Cores are really a lot more like software than hardware and GPL or BSD or whatever makes a lot of sense, depending on what the releaser is trying to achieve. OpenCores is doing pretty well.

      Real hardware is a bit more challenging to release in open source form for many reasons:
      * Hardware definitions are done in layout packages with very different file structures etc making it difficult to share designs across diferent tool chains.
      * RF and power designs are more physical implementations than schematic ones. T

  • MIT releases under MIT license?! WHAT?! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by phantomcircuit (938963) on Sunday February 10 2008, @05:50PM (#22373810) Homepage
    Nothing to see here.

  • MIT =/= BSD (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 10 2008, @05:51PM (#22373822)
    Would anyone care to point out the practical differences between the MIT/X and the modified BSD licenses? Basically, there aren't any, so of course it makes sense for MIT to have used the MIT license.

  • License not relevant yet (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gnasher719 (869701) on Sunday February 10 2008, @05:53PM (#22373844)
    It doesn't matter very much which license is used - therefore there is no "best license". The people who did the work chose the license, as is their right. If they thought a different license was better, they would have chosen a different one.

    The license only matters when you mix material with different licenses. I cannot quite see how this would apply for example to a h.264 decoder. The best anyone can do is respect the authors and stay with their license.
  • You can't copyright a hardware design (that's what patents are for). You could copyright a circuit board layout, or a schematic (the graphic, not the concept), but it's pretty easy for someone to redo either.

    What's the problem you're trying to solve?

    • Re:Uh. Hardware is not software... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gnasher719 (869701) on Sunday February 10 2008, @05:57PM (#22373884)

      You can't copyright a hardware design (that's what patents are for). You could copyright a circuit board layout, or a schematic (the graphic, not the concept), but it's pretty easy for someone to redo either.
      Did you see the clickety link to the source code for the h.264 decoder?

      Software: Source code -> compiler -> magnetic bits on your hard drive.
      Hardware: Source code -> compiler -> lots of transistors in a chip.
      Copyright applies to any source code.

      • Re:Uh. Hardware is not software... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Mr Z (6791) on Sunday February 10 2008, @06:49PM (#22374340) Homepage Journal

        You can also copyright the masks and layouts of the transistors. Board artwork for circuit boards has long been held as copyrightable, and the miniaturized artwork that exists on a CPU is no different. If you look at closeups of dies, you will see a © symbol occasionally, such as on this one [cpu-zone.com].

        • Just because the copyright symbol is on the artwork when they etch the chip, and winds up etched onto the chip, does not mean that the etched circuit is artwork or copyrightable. The purpose of a chip die is as a device, not as an artform. Thus the chip is patentable, not copyrightable.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by Mr Z (6791)

            *sigh*

            The implemented logic is patentable (as long as it meets the other criteria, such as novelty, non-obviousness, and lack of prior art). I can make a new chip using the same logic as the current one and, if it's a different layout, then I only have to worry about patents. If the logic is patented, I'd run afoul of the patents.

            Layout, though, is not a patent issue unless the layout is integral to the invention. I had asserted that layout was covered by copyright, but I was wrong. Both of us were wr

      • I'm a little confused. Since you get an actual physical product, wouldn't a patent apply for this particular implementation?
      • What exactly defines the difference between hardware and software, patent and copyright?

        According to WIPO [wipo.int],

        In the 1970s and 1980s, there were extensive discussions on whether the patent system, the copyright system, or a sui generis system, should provide protection for computer software. These discussions resulted in the generally accepted principle that computer programs should be protected by copyright, whereas apparatus using computer software or software-related inventions should be protected by patent

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by forkazoo (138186)

          Let me ask this way - assuming it didn't already exist, would a half-adder be copyrightable or patentable? Would it make a difference if it were expressed as RTL code or as transistors soldered together? Why? My response is that it is only patentable.

          You are making the mistake of assuming there is only one approach to this issue. If you have a purely physical design, then no, you can't copyright that. You can copyright blueprints of it, or an instruction sheet telling how to build it, or a script that pro

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by zippthorne (748122)
      Yet, you still have the issue of licensing.

      You can hold the sole rights of production, you can charge people for the right to produce more of the thing, you can just let anyone produce more of the thing, or presumably, you can do something in between: offer limited rights to reproduce your invention for free if certain conditions are met, which is precisely the goal of the GPL with respect to software copyright.

      Is it so much of a stretch that one or more of the stock "open" software licenses might be suitab

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Copyright applies to the expression of an idea, not the idea itself, regardless of whether it's software, hardware, or the great-american-novel.

      Hardware designs are most frequently expressed in a hardware-definition language (HDL) such as Verilog or VHDL. The HDL source can be copyrighted just like a program written in your favorite language.

    • You can't copyright a hardware design
      You can't be that stupid.

    • TFS is broken. A core is really software. It is written in code (eg. VHDL or Verilog). That source code is copyrightable just like any other code.

  • WARNING! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 10 2008, @06:05PM (#22373968)
    WARNING! If you do not use the CORRECTLY APPROVED license then MICROSOFT can STEAL your hardware! That's what they did with BSD and why there IS NO BSD ANYMORE!

  • Same Difference (Score:5, Informative)

    by John Hasler (414242) on Sunday February 10 2008, @06:07PM (#22373980)
    There is no significant difference between the MIT license and the modified BSD license.

  • The FSF recommend their own of course (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dbIII (701233) on Sunday February 10 2008, @06:17PM (#22374072)
    The FSF are responsible for the GPL and know it well so that is why they list that and not the others. It is not their purpose to list other people's stuff. The answer is to read the other licences and see what fits.

  • Looking at the tagging system... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Daimanta (1140543) on Sunday February 10 2008, @06:20PM (#22374106) Journal
    It appears that Slashdot advocates a so called hardhack license. Does anyone have more info about it?

    • TAPR Open Hardware License. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by vk2tds (175334) on Sunday February 10 2008, @06:26PM (#22374152)
      This is the reason that TAPR [tapr.org] created the Open Hardware License [tapr.org]. It is available in two versions - the Open Hardware License, and the Non-Commercial Open Hardware License. The former is like GPL for hardware, and the latter provides a license that can be used to allow a company to open a design without giving their competitors the chance to use the design commercially.

      It is designed to provide many protections including of the circuit designs and layouts, and patent protection.

      Darryl

      P.S. I am on the board of TAPR

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by sconeu (64226)
        One of the presentations at SCALE [socallinuxexpo.com] yesterday was on open source model rocket avionics. The guy licensed his designs under TAPR OHL. Sounds like a good license.
  • What's the best open-source license to use for biological innovations and strains?

    I personally prefer the MPL, the BSD/MIT and lGPL, but would also be interested in seeing what GPL-lovers (those who agree with the FSF's positions) have to say as well.

    • Re:Follow-up Question... (Score:4, Funny)

      by dotancohen (1015143) on Sunday February 10 2008, @06:44PM (#22374300) Homepage

      What's the best open-source license to use for biological innovations and strains?
      The WMD license.
    • Not that I agree with this idea, but Communism put forth by Marx says that the people should own the means to manufacture.

      When it comes to software, one can write, and many can gain. Considering that we have free OSes, free compilers, and free testing kits says that the people DO have the means now. That there is communism, as according to Karl Marx. No rights are trampled on, nobody thrown in gulags. In fact, the FSF tries to keep a civil tone when dealing with GPL-breaking companies and approach complianc
  • Seriously... whichever license you want. It's not that they're all the same, it's that they all serve different purposes. As long as you take the appropriate steps to make sure no morons are going to try to sue you if it blows up in their faces (literally or figuratively), then the rest of the license doesn't really matter now, does it? Claim whatever rights you want, give away whatever rights you please.

    Just because it's "open source" doesn't mean that you don't get to retain any rights. Pick which rights
  • Considering the expense of manufacturing hardware, the OGP (http://www.opengraphics.org) is trying to find ways to make their hardware both Free (in the Stallman sense) and also profitable. To wit, they have formed a company, Traversal Technology (http://www.traversaltech.com) to handle the monetary issues, make profit, and reinvest the money into designing and fabricating more Free-Design hardware. Their tactic is use the GPL license on all of their hardware designs in a manner much like MySQL or TrollTe
      • Those off-the-shelf solutions are THE THING to use when for most applications. Definitely savings on time and headaches. But I've encountered a few strange situations where those solutions would not support the resolution and/or pixel rate we needed. No choice but to roll your own. Pain in the ass too!

  • This kind of "hardware" has a more applicable term that differentiates it from actual hardware (boards, resistors, etc.): firmware. As the name applies, it is kind of software, but not really software, and kind of hardware, but not quite hardware. It sits somewhere in the middle. It is described by "code" (more aptly called a Hardware Description Language, or HDL) but the result is "hardware" in the form of a chip (be it an ASIC, FPGA, CPLD, etc.). It seems to be an intrinsic gray area. Should we handl

  • Reasoning behind the OpenCores FAQ (Score:5, Informative)

    by femto (459605) on Sunday February 10 2008, @08:33PM (#22374982) Homepage
    I wrote [opencores.org] the section of the OpenCores FAQ that the story refers to so I can give a little background history.

    The FAQ answer was the result of an extended discussion on the OpenCores mailing lists about the best license to use. We didn't come up with a definitive answer and the GPL, LGPL, modified BSD recommendation was aimed at reducing license proliferation while giving people a choice between copyleft and non-copyleft. The MIT license was judged to be close enough to the modified BSD license (also noted [opensource.org] by OSI) that we could just choose one of them. Reducing proliferation was an issue since people were experimenting with different homebrewed licenses with potential to fragment the community.

    Open and Free licensing is still a murky issue for hardware as much of hardware falls outside of copyright. In so far as copyright applies (schematics, bitstreams, source code, ...) it was decided that licenses such as the GPL could be applied. It is still not clear by what legal mechanism a hardware manufacturer can be forced to disclose the "open" portions of a system.

    For example say someone builds an integrated circuit using GPLd VHDL from the OpenCores website. The chip might be covered by circuit layout rights but it is questionable whether copyright is applicable. It seems unclear that the GPL can be applied to a chip. A system such as a circuit board is even murkier since it is not covered by circuit layout rights and being a functional system might fall outside copyright (despite manufacturers plastering their boards with the copyright symbol). Any copyright could also be circumvented by rerunning an autorouter with a different seed to generate a different pattern of PCB tracks.

    It will be very interesting to see what conclusion Eben Moglen, Mary Lou Jepsen and so on come to now that the OLPC and Pixel Qi have prompted the Free Software community to seriously examine [pixelqi.com] the underpinnings of Free Hardware. A number of years ago Richard Stallman was of the view that Free Hardware was outside the mission of the FSF and freedom for hardware was not relevant since the difficulty of manufacturing was a greater barrier to freedom than the law.

  • Chose GPL for OpenSPARC (Score:4, Informative)

    by WebMink (258041) <slashdot&webmink,net> on Sunday February 10 2008, @11:51PM (#22376106) Homepage

    We (that's Sun Microsystems) chose the GPL as the license under which to release everything necessary to make an UltraSPARC T1 (and more recently, T2). We placed it all - RTL, tools, the lot - at OpenSPARC.Net [opensparc.net]. The license choice was for two main reasons:

    1. We felt the GPL was widely accepted as a Free license. We hoped that would encourage all kinds of people to feel free to take a look.
    2. We wanted those who used the code from OpenSPARC to publish the new work they built from it.

    While releasing hardware sources under a Free license is a different deal to software, the GPL seems to encourage the same willingness to examine and use the code as it does in software. The mechanisms for community have to be different because of the capital-intensive nature of the processes to use the code. We've still seen people rework it to fit it on FPGAs, create single-core chips for embedding and run university degree courses on it. I remain pretty happy with the license choice we made.

    • The AC is right, these designs are basically read only for most people because they require Bluespec's [bluespec.com] tools [bluespec.com]. Perhaps this release should be called Academically Licensed since that is the only free license available for Bluespec.


      Still good of the team to release the IP, but a breathy /. post.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by boyter (964910)
      Im sure this is a deliberate troll, but to avoid someone getting misinformation.... 1. You don't to publish your changes to GNU GPL code unless you are doing to distribute it. IE if you change linux to suit your environment and never sell/give away those changes you are not obliged to release code. 2. Check the license for GCC, things created with it do not have to be released under the GNU GPL. I suggest you get better lawyers, contact the FSF or at very least read the FAQ on the FSF website.

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