Best Open Source License For Hardware? 125
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?"
Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
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.
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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.
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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
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As you point
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[OT] question for you (Score:2)
Just recently I've been looking into learning about DSP and potentially starting out with a FPGA. I have looked at the Spartan-3E kit. Would you recommend it for learning? Or something else? I was hoping to stay under $100 but maybe I was fooling myself. I have a background in mechanical engineering (with essentially a math minor), but do a lot of programming and have taken a few entry-level EE classes, and am interested in digital signal processing. There's a lot of information online but it's overw
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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
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There is nothing whatsoever wrong with Apple's treatment of Darwin. Darwin is based on BSD-licensed open-source code, so Apple has no obligation to release Darwin source code back to the public, nor any obligation to release the sources of the other additions they add to Darwin to make their OS's. And this is what the original poster was commenting on. He didn't say Apple was doing anything wrong.
Another post indicates to me that Ap
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I don't see the iPhone Darwin source there.
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Incorrect, lets look I said:So. Have Apple extended the freebsd source without releasing all the improvements to the community?
There's the source.
But not the source for the iPhone extensions
You lose.
No. You do. Dumbass.
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____
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
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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.
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Simply not true. Under US law, you can make something public domain by simply stating that it is so. "I make this work part of the public domain." Once you say that, you can never retract that offer. Very few people do that though, and even for those that do, most don't leave enough of a record to make it clear to a subsequent user.
There are lots of issues, of course, with allowing something to merely be public domain. The biggest one is the right to attributio
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At best, this part of copyright code is ambiguous. There is no mechanism in the US copyright code for establishing new works as public domain, unless they are created by the government. The notion of a disclaimer of copyright upon the release of a new work has never been codified. In the past, a work was considered public domain if it was released without a copyri
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
--------
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.
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DWTFYWWI LICENSE
Version 1, January 2006
Copyright (C) 2006 Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
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Something like "we aren't responsible in any way for the use of this and make no claims to the fitness for any application-even as standing along without alterations", should be added. And "by using this, design/product/whatever this license is attached to, you have shown your acceptance of this license because nothing else gives you any righ
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There they go, forcing things on us in the guise of "Freedom." Forced name change != freedom, people. No better than the viral nature of the GPL.
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Cores != hardware (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
MIT =/= BSD (Score:3, Informative)
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License not relevant yet (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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You might want to combine it with something else, to make e.g. a hardware transcoder, for which you might want to include an ac3 encoder based off an existing software one rather than writing one from scratch, and last I knew the only decent open-source one around was GPLed. Just as an example
Uh. Hardware is not software... (Score:2, Insightful)
What's the problem you're trying to solve?
Re:Uh. Hardware is not software... (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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].
Purpose counts. (Score:2)
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*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
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I guess that's what comes from not being an intellectual property lawyer.
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See, I *knew* it couldn't be solely protected by patents. I'm not an IP lawyer, but I do work closely with them regularly. I'm on our company's patent committee, and so I have a pretty good idea of what patents are meant to cover and what they're not meant to cover.
I had never heard of the separate "mask work" protection. Interesting stuff.
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My, what tact! I'm sure you'll win friends and influence people that way, and have nothing but a direct path to the top! Combine that with your unabashed forwardness and your knack for standing behind your words, and wow... you're a force to be reckoned with!
FWIW, I'm an engineer that gets to deal with the practical side of IP and IP law, and as such mostly has to wrangle with patents and (to a thankfully lesser extent) licensing. Sure, I'm not actually a lawyer, but I do work with our patent attorneys a
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Yeah, though I did follow up with a correction. Granted, the masks I remembered seeing © on [cpu-zone.com] were prior to the 1984 law that made explicit that masks are not covered under copyright, and established separate protection for them. (And here I thought it was just because newer masks had such small features that the copyright designation becomes harder to see.) Of course, in those early days of computing, nobody was sure what copyright actually covered. Modern masks, such as this one [flylogic.net] do have the circle
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The details of the layout artwork (and good layout *IS* artwork!), rather than the overall functional concept, are vital to making complex circuits. Patent law does not cover that detailed a level of implementation. Copyright, or something like it for the masks being discussed, seems to make more sense.
You bring up an interesting question... (Score:3, Informative)
According to WIPO [wipo.int],
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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
So, if you copyright a schematic... (Score:2)
You haven't answered the fundamental question - what is the characteristic in the continuum from high level descriptive language (Bluespec) through finished product (a functional H.264 decoder) that defines the transition from software to hardware, from copyrightable to patentable?
If I take a PROM, and program it so the inputs are connected to a regularly
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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
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Not sure about netlists. Once you get down to it, there's a grey area between software and hardware with and FPGA.
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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.
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But we are comfortable with the GPL for our products ( http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/cameras [fsf.org]) - hardware board is more dead than alive if you take away the FPGA code (GPL-ed) and the software (GPL-ed, based on GNU/Linux). Our hardware evolved in parallel with the code that was ported/modified to run on the newer boards.
So theoretically - yes, it is possible to make
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I suggest the best way to answer the question is to do it and find out.
Cores are more like software (Score:2)
WARNING! (Score:4, Funny)
Same Difference (Score:5, Informative)
The FSF recommend their own of course (Score:3, Insightful)
MIT License (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
OpenCores does not mention the MIT license because in a nutshell it IS the BSD license. In fact many schools release code under a generally renamed BSD license with their schools name on it.
For Example: The LLVM is released under the University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License which can be found here. [llvm.org] Reading through it is very similiar to the BSD license [opensource.org]
And Here is the MIT License... Look familiar?
The MIT License
Copyright (c)
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
Looking at the tagging system... (Score:4, Funny)
TAPR Open Hardware License. (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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Follow-up Question... (Score:2, Interesting)
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)
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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
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My understanding is that "the people" is being used in the same sense as in the US Constitution - IE "everyone", not "a handful of people who happen to have accumulated a lot of money". So ideally, things like heavy punch presses and stereolithography systems would be shared and available for anyone to use, like parks or libraries. Of course, that's
Democratic acces to manufacture... (Score:2)
Hmmm.... You haven't payed much attention to that little thing called FPGA [wikipedia.org], have you ? /.ers have mentionned playing with such chips in this d
FPGA have brought the cost of chip design and experimenting within the reach of mere mortals. Several
Um... whichever you want? (Score:2)
Just because it's "open source" doesn't mean that you don't get to retain any rights. Pick which rights
Obvious (Score:1, Flamebait)
FYI, to the original poster: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A BEST LICENSE. To think there is, is to ignore reality. The "bes
The Open Graphics Project deals with this (Score:2)
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While true that this HDL code could be implemented in an FPGA, this tends to be MUCH less cost effective than finding an "off the shelf" solution. I recently went down this path with H264 encode. To implement 2 channels of H264 encode in an FPGA ends up costing around US $100. (Not
Sometimes you have to roll your own (Score:2)
Patent + docs + zero-charge licensing? (Score:1)
If the objective is to help the developing world, then there are two problems: international patenting can be expensive, but failure to patent could result in a big player patenting and then suing the originators of the design. Does every approach involve too much red tape to be worthwhile?
An article... (Score:1)
We recently published an article about open hardware licenses in Free Software Magazine:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/making_open_hardware_possible [freesoftwaremagazine.com]
As well as Terry Hancock's article about purchasing free software friendly hardware:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/purchasing_hardware_for_free_software [freesoftwaremagazine.com]
I think it will complement the linked articles above nicely!
Merc.
s/hard/firm/g (Score:2, Informative)
Reasoning behind the OpenCores FAQ (Score:5, Informative)
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,
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.
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I suspect the reason for the FSF's "probably not" answer is that copyright does not co
FPGA Configware isn't Hardware (Score:2, Insightful)
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Chose GPL for OpenSPARC (Score:4, Informative)
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:
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.
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LGPL should not be used! (Score:1)
I think OpenCores is wrong. According to Richard Stallman, "the LGPL really is specifically for programs". That statment was given on the freepats list (can't point to the archives because there is a problem with the server in this moment, sorry). The terms of the LGPL are very hard to translate and apply to other works.
The GPL can be used, but if used for works other than programs, the copyright holder should attach a note clarifying the meaning of source code, linking, and other terms mentioned in the G
Should the FSF be trusted in this? (Score:1)
The real question is whether you should trust the FSF in this. I know I don't.
The FSF has an agenda, and it's not "be good to the world and give unbiased information". Their main objective is "spreading the GPL" - which arguably falls in the "do good to the world" category, although I'm not entirely convinced about that. Spreading
Patents (Score:1)
Unclear Definitions (Score:1)
Especially the old debate about what constitutes linking rises again: If I use a GPLed VHDL core in my FPGA, which part of my design do I need to publish under the GPL: Modifications to the core? The whole FPGA design? The design of cores in other FPGAs on the same board? The board layout and schematics? The system the board is used in?
Am I allowed to use propri
None of the above (Score:2)
If you've att
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By copyright/patent/trademark protection, you as a non-creator have NO rights. Only the creator can grant rights. A license is a way to tell the community "You can use this for free if you follow my rules". Fair enough.
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Re:Of course the FSF only lists GPL (Score:5, Informative)
Don't spread FUD about the FSF. Their agenda is not the GPL at all costs, it is to promote free software, and those are two different things.
Counterexamples to your claim of "GPL at all costs":
- The FSF plainly says that free software does not require using the GPL [0]
- The FSF plainly says that releasing software under the modified BSD license (or another non-copyleft license) is not wrong [1]
- The FSF does not use the GPL for all of its software, because it hopes that by doing so it will promote free software [2]
[0] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesFreeSoftwareMeanUsingTheGPL [gnu.org]
[1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-copyleft.html [gnu.org]
[2] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html [gnu.org]
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Still good of the team to release the IP, but a breathy
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1. You don't [have] to publish your changes to GNU GPL code unless you are [doing-->going] to distribute it.
Please spellcheck your statements that try to explore tight logical or legal issues. It will make your post much more legible. I'll restrain my other spelling comments, because I also make a typo now and then.