GH Design Challenge: The Geekhack General Purpose Public Legal License (GGPPLL)

[mkawa]

this is the second in a series of difficult design challenges i'm posing to the geekhack community. the first was the design of a mini dynamometer for keyboard switches. LINK. the next is not a mechanical challenge but a legal challenge. TBC

[mkawa]

reserved

[agodinhost]

How about getting one already written?
http://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical

[Hak Foo]

I suggest the WTFPL.  Quick and to the point.

[sth]

I suggest the WTFPL.  Quick and to the point.

backed

[OldDataHands]

Of course the goals of the GGPPLL should be made clear
before a license can be created.

I'm of a copyleft mindset.

A very interesting read (IANAL) about copyleft vs. hardware:
http://www.ifosslr.org/ifosslr/article/view/69/131

In his analysis above, Andrew Katz makes a convincing (to
this non-lawyer) argument that there may not be a robust
way to make a copyleft open hardware license.

The best known (to Google) copyleft Open Hardware Licenses:
http://www.tapr.org/OHL
http://www.ohwr.org/projects/cernohl/wiki

My desire for the DodoHand is that the design files
would go with the hardware, should someone undertake
to produce the hardware commercially (not that I think
this a likely scenario) so that the keyboard owner would
have the necessary information to reproduce the device
when the commercial producer folds.

There seems to be a (prevailing ?) GH zeitgeist of "Put it
into the public domain!", which I seem to be slightly out-
of-step with, and for which no special license would seem
necessary.

@mkawa: perhaps you should take a poll of the folks on GH
who are creating designs to get a feel for what is desired?

If we have any lawyers, perhaps they can comment on the
Katz analysis?

[Hak Foo]

One thing is that there's a lot of edge cases when it comes to the copyrightability of functional objects.  This tends to make copyright licenses not fit well with hardware projects-- as what of the design is functional?

You can't force open on a business that doesn't want to play along.  Even if you can get a dump from a vendor, it will likely be like the begrudging firmware releases you see for Wi-fi routers and some Android phones; barely competent, not publicised, and basically there solely to satisfy the minimum legal complaince.

Maybe the better approach is the "Reference Video Card" mindset.  Make your design the flagship for the product, that everyone aspires to emulate.  They may be selling the product without full specs, but if it's the same as your well-documented reference model but with a cosmetic twak, then the documentation you can offer will be good enough.

[mkawa]

for various reasons, this is now fairly urgent. i am not a lawyer or enough of an expert in IP law to define strict requirements, but we need to produce a document.

if you have a license to practice law in ANY STATE OF THE UNION and/or have an IP LAW CERTIFICATION, PLEASE CONTACT ME DIRECTLY ASAP

[Thimplum]

I suggest the WTFPL.  Quick and to the point.

backed

Backed again.

[mkawa]

I suggest the WTFPL.  Quick and to the point.

backed

Backed again.

i don't really want to have to address this because it's such a thread derail, but no, this doesn't even work as intended much less for our purposes. please do not mention this again. real work needs to get done in this thread. thanks.

[Krogenar]

What is it we're trying to accomplish here? We should explicitly state the issue, problems, or whatever condition we're trying to create or prevent.

[Thimplum]

What is it we're trying to accomplish here? We should explicitly state the issue, problems, or whatever condition we're trying to create or prevent.

^this^

What are we trying to do here exactly? One does not create a Legal License by saying "i really need a license its urgent plz help".

What do you want this license to do?

[jdcarpe]

Hopefully kawa will correct me if I'm off course here, but this is what I perceive the intent of the GGPPLL to be.

If someone designs a piece of hardware, firmware, etc., the license would allow the community to use the design, e.g. for a not-for-profit group buy purpose. But rights would be retained by the originator to restrict commercial entities from producing the hardware or its direct derivatives for profit.

[mkawa]

the goal is to produce a self-propagating GPL style license that is all-encompassing for a piece of hardware like a keyboard. there will be additional restraints and requirements, but i'll let the other parties, including the SMART DUDE KREW i've assembled and the partner that is pushing on getting this done pop in and start sketching them out.

at the moment it's a very open (as in ill-defined) open source license project that needs to be fleshed out (in terms of requirements and constraints) before it can be fleshed out (as an actual license).

[mkawa]

a team has been assembled. please welcome:

Input Nirvana
Whiskytango
eth0s

to the Geekhack legal-team-that-is-not-acting-in-any-way-as-legal-professionals-and-is-hence-not-liable-for-any-bad-things-that-may-result-from-their-advice-but-only-acting-as-concerned-community-members-who-have-no-expertise-in-the-law-as-far-as-this-project-is-concerned.

the short name for this team is the Geekhack Upright Citizens Brigade.

That's about as far as we've gotten so far. But that's because IP law is freaking hard.

[Thimplum]

I KNEW THAT ETH0S WAS A LAW PERSON!

That's about as far as we've gotten so far. But that's because IP law is freaking hard.

I consider it unnecessary, but each to his own, I guess.

 

[mkawa]

he is just an upright citizen, sir.

[Thimplum]

he is just an upright citizen, sir.

Ah. I know that winkytango is an attorney, but I didn't know about the others.

[mkawa]

so, i would like to hear from the makers on what they expect out of putting their designs up and how they would like their designs to be used and not used. komar, for example, put out an awesome pcb design for 60% on a the hardware gpl iirc. the hardware gpl has many weird issues, and may not be exactly what he wants. dox put out his design almost completely open and then a ****storm, to be quite frank, resulted, where he wanted everyone to be able to use his design and some other people wanted restrictions. i'm not clear exactly why soarer keeps his code closed. i completely understand why someone would want to, and i have no problem with it personally, but he has never said "well, this is what rights i want to keep, and what rights i'd like to be able to give with qualifications".

everyone here who makes something and publishes any kind of source about how they made it should have a say in how that thing they just put their heart and soul into is used. that's what the ggppll is all about. it's not about duplicating the gpl for geekhack. it's about figuring out why we make things here and how we're ok with those things being used and how we're _not_ ok with those things being used.

so let's talk about it! fnf!

[Photekq]

Personally, depending on the project I'd do one of the following :

1. Completely open source - more simple projects that i'm not doing for myself, but instead doing for the community
2. Completely closed, no files given out - more complex projects that i spend a lot of time on and do for myself (e.g tek80)

[mkawa]

this is a great point, because it kind of highlights where a license would fit in the spectrum. you can _always_ do completely open and completely closed without the rule of law. to make something completely open, you just release your "thing" as it were, and make everything (including brain dumps) that you used to make it available.

to make something completely closed, you make it, and then never show anyone any hint of it or discuss it at all with anyone. ever.

licensing exists to bridge the gap between the two, but it's so open ended, just being a document, that it can put you anywhere at all between the two. the general question is 'where do the makers on geekhack mostly want to be on this spectrum?'. to get there, we need to have a bit of a census of where each individual maker wants to be.

[regack]

I haven't made anything yet that I'm worried about licensing but I can see, for example,  that someone like OldDataHands might want to have some protections for the sheer amount of time and effort put into the DoDoHand.   

In my case, I'm aware of the fact that someone could take what I made, replicate it, and then start selling stuff for profit, but I can accept that, so I've put it out there for anyone who wants to tinker.  I learned because others before me shared, so I'm doing the same at this point.

I might change my mind in the future, however, so to borrow from Photekq and add a bit more...

1. Completely Open - anyone can do anything with it, no restrictions whatsoever
2. Partially Open - all or some files shared with restrictions
3. Completely Closed - No files given out, but because I put a lot of time into it and think it's cool, I'm going to share some photos of the finished product and you can be envious of my Cool Thing.

So, expanding Partially Open further, we could run into these possibilities...
- only for group buy
- only for personal use
- for group buy & personal use
- no modifications to design allowed
- modifications to design allowed freely
- modifications allowed so long as credit is given
- some more things I can't think of, because I haven't really been doing this for all that long...

Anyway, just some thoughts, hopefully they're useful.

[TheSoulhunter]

I'd be happy with some sort of CC (especially "by-nc") implementation for content shared here

[elitekeyboards]

I know roll-your-own is the spirit around GH, but having authored and been a party of many legal documents, I'd recommend not reinventing the wheel. Also, a third party license would more likely be embraced by makers on other keyboard forums, e.g. deskthority, making licensing between the larger keyboard community simpler as well.

I'd consider the new CERN version 1.2 Open Hardware Licence (LINK) as it's short, simple and  covers some important bases for hardware in particular; i.e.

- Licencee must accept all liability in producing/distributing/selling the product.
- Licencee must be able to report to the Licensor the number of products produced and when.
- Licencee must keep intact all copyright and trademark notices in the original documentation.
- Licencee must not use logos or Licensor names (prevents unintended attribution or endorsement by the Licensor)

Of course GH can't make any maker use one particular licence, but encouraging a particular licence usage when a maker has not explicitly done so might get things rolling and set a good precedent for the DIY keyboarding community and other maker communities around the web.

[mkawa]

this is literally an open license. it's much closer to a CC attribution-only license than a GPL for hardware. i'm not sure which GPL (if any) the cern guys read but this is a BSD adaptation NOT a gpl adaptation. The GPL is a self-propagating license that forces open design throughout the entire graph of derivative works. This is a license that literally only requires that a notice be put on derivative works and that documentation be made available. it's also not all-encompassing, which is one of our major goals. it explicitly does not cover any software which is tied to the hardware or even the hardware itself.

thanks for the pointer, but neither this nor any variant on it will work for us. we're looking for a GPL-like license NOT a BSD-type of license.

[Krogenar]

Will there be some level of customization of the licenses? For example, IIRC the GH60 has SmallFry's name on the circuit board. If the GH60 were to be open to development by others, it should be stipulated that the SmallFry tribute will always remain on the circuit board, no matter how it was developed.

[mkawa]

of course. these things are just documents. the difference is that they are written down and refer specifically to established legal concepts and precedences. if you want to add something to a licensing document you just write it down and append it to the document. as long as it doesn't make the entire thing completely non-sensical or worse, contradictory, then life is good.

[Oobly]

Hopefully kawa will correct me if I'm off course here, but this is what I perceive the intent of the GGPPLL to be.

If someone designs a piece of hardware, firmware, etc., the license would allow the community to use the design, e.g. for a not-for-profit group buy purpose. But rights would be retained by the originator to restrict commercial entities from producing the hardware or its direct derivatives for profit.

This is the essence of what I would like in a license. I would like people to be able to play and experiment with my designs, but if they base something on it and want to commercialise it, they should be required to ask permission. Of course, this requires a definition of "based on" or "directly derived from", which could get sticky.

The concept of hardware design licenses is interesting. I see companies fighting over design patents all the time and it honestly sickens me. The whole patent system isn't working like it should any more.

[metalliqaz]

I think I fall into the "maker" category here.  I have created three keyboard designs, one of which has been manufactured and sold (at cost), and I have created a software design that I have released for free.  All of my work is currently closed.

Right from the start I avoided looking at other open designs.  (clean room design)  I did it for a number of reasons:

1) Right from the start I knew I wouldn't be open-sourcing my design, and I didn't want to get into any legal issues.
2) I wanted to deepen my understanding of keyboard design.  DIY is obviously a good way to do that.
3) I figured I could do it better.

Why wouldn't I be open-sourcing my designs?  A few reasons:

1) I didn't want to have to support the source, especially for newbies attempting to work well beyond their understanding of CAD and/or embedded programming.
2) I thought that there was a remote possibility that I may someday want to sell my work commercially.  At this point I don't think that will happen but you never know when you're just starting out.
3) This is a biggie: my job.  My employer basically claims ownership of anything you do while they employ you.  Things outside the industry don't count but there's no point in tempting fate.  Also, I am so used to writing embedded code in my day-job that I don't want to have to go through the effort to self-filter what seeps out of my brain at home.

Now, my firmware and associated keymapping application is closed but it is also free.  I have posted it online.  I want to give back to the GH community, which is why I keep updating it.

Now that this thread has me thinking, I regret not including a license right from the start.  I included support for the Phantom (which is now being sold commercially) and I would prefer it wasn't used commercially for that board without my involvement.

Would I license my work commercially?  Yes, I would.  However I would also insist on keeping it free for GH use.

These are my thoughts as a maker.  It is one perspective among many.  Hopefully it will help you define what this community needs/wants.

[mkawa]

3) This is a biggie: my job.  My employer basically claims ownership of anything you do while they employ you.  Things outside the industry don't count but there's no point in tempting fate.  Also, I am so used to writing embedded code in my day-job that I don't want to have to go through the effort to self-filter what seeps out of my brain at home.

there's a ton of fantastic stuff in here metalliqaz, but i think this is the most pertinent. in this case a GGPPLL might not even be able to help you allow geekhack access to your work. if you've signed one of these horrible "while we pay you we own everything you do" at will hiring contracts, you literally cannot license your own work because it's owned not by you but by your employer.

now, these clauses are usually less draconian than the above, but they can be as draconian as the above, and in this case a GGPPLL or any other license, the GPL, CC style, literally ANY license granted by the creator of the work is null and void because it is a breach of contract. this is dangerous because in this case someone like metalliqaz could make something, release it under any license you care to think of, and then his or her employer could sue anyone who used the work under that license or derived works under the license AND metalliqaz.

so that's why the UCB exists and why this is not something we're rushing into. this is exactly why this thread is here to discuss what issues people have and what the makers on the forum want _and_ even may be limited by.

thanks for your incredibly thoughtful contribution metalliqaz. a ton of food for thought in that post.