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On 16/01/16 18:03, Matt Maier wrote:
Yeah, that's basically it. Physical, practical, functional ideas are only covered by patents. If something works, the fact that it works is not controlled. Copyright allows you to control the description that you fixed in a medium using some amount of artistic effort. But if someone uses their own artistic effort to reproduce the idea in a medium they have copyright on their own version.
This is the fundamental problem with hardware licensing. The main open hardware licences (SolderPad, CERN OHL, and TAPR OHL) address this by recognizing that all significant hardware relies on its documentation and design drawings, which can be protected by copyright, and so the licenses protect this.
Trying to copy any significant piece of hardware without infringing the copyright on design documentation or drawings is quite hard, so these licenses work reasonably well.
Any license is not going to stop some cheap knock-off shop in the far east selling small volumes online - it's not worth the legal hassle. But anyone trying to sell large volumes through a reputable channel will have difficulty. Those channels won't risk being sued, having to bin stock, suffer reputational damage, and then pay compensation. Look how many years W H Smith wouldn't stock Private Eye for fear of such action.
Jeremy
On Jan 16, 2016 09:51, "Gareth Coleman" <gareth@l0l.org.uk mailto:gareth@l0l.org.uk> wrote:
Great articles and discussion, thanks!
I was amazed to read Stallman say:
"Copyright doesn't cover physical circuits, so when people build instances of the circuit, the design's license will have no legal effect on what they do with the devices they have built."
So provided someone is prepared to transcribe your device into their own EDA files, they can just copy it, modify it, commercialise it - without restrictions (like NC or ND) that you might want to apply? Can this be correct?!
Gareth
On 15 January 2016 at 17:00, Jason Flynn G7OCD <flynnjs@yahoo.com mailto:flynnjs@yahoo.com> wrote:
I'm going to stick my neck out here as someone who regularly makes NC and ND contribution to the community. It's unhelpful and unpleasant having people class your work as second class because of some other peoples' arbitrary redefinition of the word open. There are a lot of greedy and selfish people out there and my efforts to put my works in the public domain are for then general good and not to fuel such people who offer nothing to society in return. It doesn't mean that my efforts can never be moved forward or turned to profit but it does allow me to vet the intentions of those that I let do so.
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- -- Tel: +44 (1590) 610184 Cell: +44 (7970) 676050 SkypeID: jeremybennett Twitter: @jeremypbennett Email: jeremy.bennett@embecosm.com Web: www.embecosm.com PGP key: 1024D/BEF58172FB4754E1 2009-03-20