On Mon, Aug 22, 2005 at 09:27:58PM -0500, Patrick McNamara wrote:
> I think we need an Open Source Hardware license ...
As much as I hate to see OGP and Traversal burdened by another
complicated and ill-defined task, I believe you're right. FSF might
consider this issue important enough to help us figure out what to do.
Besides the design goals you listed for the license, I'd add at
least one more.
It must permit source code received under the "Hardware Library
General Public License" to be combined with source code under other
licenses, or under trade secret protection, to be compiled and linked into a
hardware product and distributed, without incurring an obligation to place
that other source code under "HLGPL". Without that, most chip makers will
have to consider open source hardware code unavailable to their businesses.
I'd base the distinction between a derivative work and a compilation
on whether or not the open-source file is modified. If it is, there must be
a bona fide offer to supply the modified source code to whoever receives the
implementation (in either soft or hard form). But all source code files
that do not contain any code received under an open-source license are free
from any obligations applicable to derivative works. That point should be
expressed in crystal-clear language.
If a chip maker wanted to create a new function that needed to
interact with existing open-source code, they should be able to protect
their proprietary design by segregating as much of it as possible into a
closed-source file, then modify the open-source file to provide the
necessary hooks for the closed-source portion to connect to. They would be
required to apply the open-source license to the modified file with the
hooks, but not to their own file containing the actual functionality. I
believe the Linux kernel project had a discussion about hooks, and decided
to permit this.
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