[hpsdr] Wrong license applied to projects on HPSDR web site

[Bruce Perens]

Hi Dave,

On 05/28/2011 08:52 PM, Dave Larsen wrote:
> 1. All our software is released under LGPL 2.0 and is available on the 
> SVN as source or on link from the website.
Understood. My concern is with the hardware licensing. I am part of the 
TAPR team that created Open Hardware License, and I find that there is 
significant misunderstanding of hardware licensing even among the folks 
for whom we created the license.
> 2.1 Board developers can do all the work and prototype themselves and 
> then they have all the right to pick how they want to release the 
> board documents.
Yes, the licensed entity is the document, not the actual hardware. Do 
they really understand that? We probably can't prevent unlicensed 
manufacture from schematics at all, and it is dubious that we can 
protect printed circuit board layouts (it depends on how much of the 
design is human-produced expression rather than pure function). We can 
probably protect gate-array programs and microprocessor code. But even 
that has caveats.
> 2.2 The second approach used by many developers is to submit a 
> proposal to TAPR for funding.  The policy is that convention that TAPR 
> makes one run of the board at near cost to recoup the development 
> costs. TAPR has stated they they have no intention being a long term 
> source of production boards.  Typically,  after the first TAPR run of 
> boards sell out the developer converts the Non-Commercial License to 
> Open Hardware License. 
This may indicate a false belief that the NCL can be enforced on these 
boards. Or it might just be symbolic. Given that some of you just had to 
form a company to make the boards because no manufacturer stepped up to 
the task, I am having trouble believing that anyone had to be deterred 
until TAPR was done with their run.
> Some board developers has declined to convert the license on the 
> boards they design.
I just hope that they don't believe they can enforce the NCL.
> I know that this is an awkward process but developers sign no 
> agreement and we have no officers or organisational structure other 
> than those that participate have some say in the direction of the project.
Right. But the project is promoted as an "Open Source hardware and 
software project". At the moment, it's an Open Source software and 
some-of-the-hardware project. And that isn't necessary, because you 
don't really get any of the benefits of the non-Open-Source hardware 
licenses, since they are very dubiously enforcible.

     Thanks

     Bruce

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