this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2025
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What license(s) do you recommend, and/or not recommend, for open source hardware, and why? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works to c/opensource@lemmy.ml
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I'm uncertain if the GPLv3 ^[1]^, or something from Creative Commons ^[3]^, like the CC-BY-SA ^[2]^ license, would be appropriate for open source hardware. I've come across the CERN-OHL-S ^[4]^, which appears interesting, but I've never encountered it in the wild, so I'm wary of it's apparent obscurity.

References

  1. Type: Webpage. Title: "GNU General Public License". Publisher: "GNU Operating System". Accessed: 2025-09-04T21:29Z. URI: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html.
  2. Type: Webpage. Title: "Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International". Publisher: "Creative Commons". Accessed: 2025-09-04T21:30Z. URI: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en.
  3. Type: Webpage. Title: "About CC Licenses". Publisher: "Creative Commons". Accessed: 2025-04-09T21:31Z. URI: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/.
  4. Type: Text. Title: "CERN Open Hardware Licence Version 2 - Strongly Reciprocal". Publisher: "CERN". Accessed: 2025-04-09T21:33Z. URI: https://gitlab.com/ohwr/project/cernohl/-/wikis/uploads/819d71bea3458f71fba6cf4fb0f2de6b/cern_ohl_s_v2.txt.
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[–] pReya@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The reason for the creation of AGPL is not "limiting" commercial use. It's there, so that a company commercially using your AGPL project is also required to publish its changes under AGPL, even if the only way they "distribute" the software is as a Application Service Procider (SaaS company). Because under regular GPL, this case wasn't covered, so big companies could use your code, modify it, offer it as a SaaS product and NOT publish their changes unter a free license.

AGPL specifically exists, so the rules around commercial SaaS use are clear – so I'd argue it's the opposite of "limiting commercial use".

See: https://yairudi.com/understanding-asp-loophole/

[–] lilith267@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 month ago

Sorry yea bad wording on my part, I was intending "limiting" to refer to stopping companys from profiting off of your work without limits (controbuting back to the comminity)