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### Q: Why not use existing licences such as GPL and any in the family of Creative Commons licences?
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### Q: Why not use existing licences such as GPL and any in the family of Creative Commons licences?
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A: The CERN OHL was drafted with hardware in mind. The fact that the
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licensed materials are going to take part in the process of creating
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hardware has various implications. For example, the presence of patents
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is more pervasive in the hardware world than in software or in works of
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art. The CERN OHL appropriately has a patent licensing section, which is
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lacking for example in CC licenses. The realities of hardware design in
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terms of design tools are also very different from those of software. It
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is for example very common to design Application Specific Integrated
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Circuits (ASICs) using proprietary tools with proprietary libraries
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which are an integral part of the final design. Something similar
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happens with the design of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). These
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realities need to be taken into account in the drafting of the licence
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if we don't want a strong copyleft licence which can only apply in an
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extremely reduced number of cases. Finally, it is important for a
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licence to contain text that practitioners can easily relate to. The
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CERN OHL strives to use clear terms and definitions that have easily
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recognisable and intuitive meanings for hardware designers.
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### Q: Will you seek OSI and FSF approval/endorsement?
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### Q: Will you seek OSI and FSF approval/endorsement?
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A: Yes, we want the CERN OHL to be as respectful of the four freedoms
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and the Open Source Definition as established free and open source
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software licences. The process of getting endorsement or approval from
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these respected institutions will surely make the licence
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better.
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### Q: Is this licence a contract? If it is, what is the consideration in this contract?
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### Q: Is this licence a contract? If it is, what is the consideration in this contract?
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A: Yes, the CERN OHL is a contract. Bare licences don't exist in civil
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law countries. Both Licensors and Licensees have obligations under the
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CERN OHL which count as
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consideration.
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## Questions about reciprocal hardware licensing
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## Questions about reciprocal hardware licensing
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... | @@ -58,9 +87,20 @@ reciprocal licence involves solving the challenge of ensuring that the |
... | @@ -58,9 +87,20 @@ reciprocal licence involves solving the challenge of ensuring that the |
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recipient of a piece of hardware gets access to the original design
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recipient of a piece of hardware gets access to the original design
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files. CERN OHL v2 provides two mechanisms to ensure that:
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files. CERN OHL v2 provides two mechanisms to ensure that:
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- The licence explicitly asks to provide an easy way
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- The licence explicitly asks a Licensee to provide an easy way to
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access the design Source to recipients of products when (s)he makes
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- two
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and distributes products based on CERN OHL licensed designs.
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- For cases in which a tangible piece of hardware changes hands many
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times before reaching the final recipient, it is impossible to
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enforce the obligations above without making the licence text much
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more complicated and incurring in many extra contractual relations.
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The original designer though, can make it much more likely for the
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recipient to get access to the design files by including a URL or
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similar in the design, in a place where it will result in a visible
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imprinted label in the final object. The CERN OHL requests that
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downstream Licensees respect that Notice and modify it accordingly
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if they modify the design
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files.
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