Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
open-source hardware specifies that you must allow modification and commer-
cial re-use of your design, so do not use licenses with a no-derivatives or non-
commercial clause.
Popular copyleft licenses include
Creative Commons Attribution, Share-Alike (BY-SA)
GNU General Public License (GPL)
Hardware-specific licenses: TAPR OHL, CERN OHL
Permissive licenses include:
FreeBSD license
MIT license
Creative Commons Attribution (BY)
It is good practice to include a copy of the license in the version control re-
pository, and a statement in every file or at least the README specifying the
author(s) and year(s) of non-trivial modifications, and the license.
Distributing Open Source Hardware
Provide links to the source (original design files) for your hardware on
the product itself, its packaging, or its documentation.
Make it easy to find the source (original design files) from the website
for a product.
Label the hardware with a version number or release date so that people
can match the physical object with the corresponding version of its
design files.
Use the open-source hardware logo on your hardware. Do so in a way
that makes it clear which parts of the hardware the logo applies to (i.e.,
which parts are open-source).
In general, clearly indicate which parts of a product are open-source
(and which aren't).
Don't refer to hardware as open-source until the design files are avail-
able. If you plan on open-sourcing the product in the future, say that in-
stead.
