From: John Ackermann N8UR <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] TAPR Open HArdware License -- Public Comment Period Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 13:51:34 -0500 Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> One big difference between hardware and software is that copyright > licensing, which is what the BSD and other software licenses do, isn't > very useful since copyright extends only to the expression of an idea, > and not the idea itself. Indeed. > As a result, simply copyrighting a schematic doesn't allow you to > control someone making a product based on that schematic. Indeed. Also, I can make a schematic for the same design for which I have the copyright (if artistically sufficiently different, which does not say anything about the change in values or electrical difference) but that does not makes me free to produce the product as such. I do have a greater control over the spreading of the schematic. This naturally, unless there where some form of NDA style deals around it. If I reverse engineer something, I can naturally make a schematic and spread. > It requires a very different approach, which is what the OHL tries to do (OHL > includes a mutual patent immunity provision that provides a legal > underpinning for the rest of the agreement). As far as I understand the Patents part of the document, the patent part provide IPR license to any patents covered, but it does not cover the publication aspect that I mentioned. The point of doing this is naturally to make those using the material clear that what they have received manifests a publication and thus can be considered public knowledge and this prohibits them from applying a patent for it. This would be necessary to make sure that the licensors and users will be protected from a unscropolous receiver of the material. The one thing which needs to be clarified in the Making Products part relates to the issue of how something covered by this License is to be handled when being a part of a larger product. Say that someone makes a nice little GPS board under this license. Say that some manufacteur includes this board (with maybe some adaptations to fit into the end product), how do you deal with it? What if the basic schematic and board becomes just a section of a larger design on a board, where the rest of the design can be considered strictly commercial. What does the Licence require? Will the rest of the design _need_ to be covered by the design? This is similar to the linking issues of GPL/LGPL. Cheers, Magnus _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list [email protected] https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
