Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
2
.
And the person who put the installer there is not a trademark infringer peddling counterfeit versions
of Firefox.
The same is true, but potentially even more so, in the world of hardware. Someone
who is getting ready to buy a piece of open source hardware wants to know who designed
the product, just as someone who is getting ready to download some open source software
wants to know who designed the software. But that open source hardware customer also
cares about who actually assembled the product. While anyone can compile a software
package with essentially the same result, two different people can assemble an identical
piece of hardware with very different results.
For this reason, controlling the trademark of your open source hardware project can be
very important. Although you will have to come to terms with people creating poorly
made versions of your product (it will happen), passing those poorly made versions off as
coming from you should be a different matter. Registering your trademark helps you to
build a reputation for quality and reliability by giving you the ability to make sure that
only products that are up to your standards get to use the name.
This does not mean that you cannot license your trademark to others. In theory, you
could license your trademark under the same types of terms that you license copyrights or
patents. You could allow other parties to use your trademark as long as they complied
with conditions that forced them to share their derivative in the same way, or to not use
the mark on commercial products.
In practice, it probably makes more sense to hold your mark a bit closer to the chest.
Remember, a trademark is your project's identity in the marketplace. People will rightly
assume that anything identified with the mark came from you and is up to your standards.
If they find that not to be the case, it may undermine their confidence in everything that
you do. If you choose to license your trademark, you should talk to a trademark attorney,
because each case is different.
What to Do Now
By this point in the chapter, you may have concluded that the licensing issues surrounding
open source hardware are a bit more complicated than those surrounding open source soft-
ware. If you haven't, you haven't been reading that closely. Unlike software, which is auto-
matically and completely protected by copyright from the moment it is typed out, hardware
is a mix of possibly copyright-protected elements, patent-protected elements, and entirely
unprotected elements. As a consequence, it is unlikely that we will see an easy-to-under-
stand, widely applicable, commonly agreed-upon license for open source hardware soon.
Fortunately, this does not mean that all hope is lost. Remember, the core of open source
hardware is about sharing. Regardless of the license you do or do not use, sharing means
