Re: gEDA-user: licensing (GPL or otherwise) for hardware?

[Steve Meier <smeier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Think about it this way. Can I take a best selling novel scan it into an
electronic file, change the font and then publish it? I don't think so.
I also don't think you can verbatum copy someones schematics and
re-layout the board without violating the schematics copyright. Anyone
who releases a very similar work had better be able to demonstrate that
their work is original. Original schematics, failed earlier attempts and
lab books would all probably be good evidence.

I think the key here is that if you reverse engineer (an oxy-morron for
an open source project) ronja, draw your own schematics, layout your own
boards, right your own code (software and programable logic) then you
are in the clear. Make sure you document everything.

Remember the efforts in the early days of the PC to make legal versions
of the bios. Software clean rooms etc. Because, Karel has made his work
available to the public (even more so then IBM did in one of the
original pc technical manual where they published the BIOS source code).
Inorder to make a clean non-free version of Ronja, you would have to
have one group go through ronja and maticulously document design
specifications and requirements. Then use a second non-contaminated team
to design to meet the specifications. Again document each step of the
effort. Otherwise Karel might have a good chance to shut your efforts
down.

Steve Meier


On Tue, 2006-12-19 at 14:33 -0500, DJ Delorie wrote:
> > I think the printed circuit board itself can have a copyright.
> 
> Yeah, that's the tricky question.  The board *as made* may be
> copyright-protected, but the *circuit* on the board may not be.  So,
> if you take Ronja's schematics and do your own layout, the resulting
> board may not be illegal, but copying Ronja's board may be.
> 
> Assuming Ronja's license prohibits it ;-)
> 
> 
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