> DJ, Dan, Harry, what licence covers PCB's footprints (if any). If > there is none, can we choose one which facilitates use of the tools > for commercial purposes?
The m4 files are GPL, (C) Thomas Nau. The situation there is legally vague, since they *produce* the footprints, they aren't themselves the footprints. It would depend on whether the output of those programs could be considered a derived work from the programs themselves. The newlib files have no copyright notices. The default, unfortunately, is "no rights", but one could argue that the GPL applies as that is the overall license for the package. The files were created before footprints had a mechanism for storing such attributes. I'm not the original author, so I can't say with authority, but I consider footprints to be like fonts, and the results of using the footprint *descriptions* (our copyrighted text) to produce a likeness of the footprint (copper on your board) should not impose our license on your board. I.e. the copyrighted part is not the footprint itself, but the instructions for generating it. Since the GPL does not allow restricting USE of those instructions, we cannot restrict the results of using them (the board). Contrast to, say, woodworking plans where the license often restricts your ability to use them to produce commercial products. Again, just my opinion. _______________________________________________ geda-dev mailing list [email protected] http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-dev
