Can anyone give me a rundown of the various licenses that are well-suited to open hardware? I've designed a few circuit boards and would like to make them available for others to use, so I need to choose a license for them.
Things I'm concerned about:
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Attribution. Are others required to credit me? If so, how? I know this turned out to be a big issue with some BSD licenses for software.
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Commercial use. Can folks copies of my work, or not? I don't really care if they do, but I'd like some credit if so 🙂
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Can others take my work and make "closed" derivatives of it? Similar to #2, but for when people start changing things.
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How "strong" is this license? 2 lines made up by a random hacker can constitute a license, but I'd prefer someone with legal training to have looked at it.
Best Answer
I use the creative commons license and the GNU LGPL version 3, which is normally used for software but has now been extended to hardware also. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html
Even though people can copy your work, the license will protect you if someone rips off your idea without accrediting you even if they take your idea and change it (proving this could be difficult). The license also protects against people copying your work for any commercial exploits.
As with all licenses, trademarks and copyright they are only a strong as the legal team you can afford to back them up with.
Even a patent is pretty pathetic when faced with the legal team of a large corporation. A company I used to work for in the UK had £50,000 worth of patents on a new loud speaker system, just to have some big company bring out an almost identical, but slightly different system, 6 months after. Patents and Licenses are all good, if your a massive company, for the average joe it's a waste of cash.
I make and sell all my work with both the CC and LGPL licenses - http://www.sonodrome.co.uk
As far as I know they are the most comprehensive free licenses available online.