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97-740: It is not enough to merely use an open-source license ; an open source product or project will follow open source principles, such as modular design and community collaboration. Since the rise of reconfigurable programmable logic devices , sharing of logic designs has been a form of open-source hardware. Instead of the schematics, hardware description language (HDL) code is shared. HDL descriptions are commonly used to set up system-on-a-chip systems either in field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA) or directly in application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designs. HDL modules, when distributed, are called semiconductor intellectual property cores , also known as IP cores. Open-source hardware also helps alleviate

194-421: A copyleft base must come with the source code, and the source code must be available under the same or a similar license. This offers protection against proprietary software consuming code without giving back. Richard Stallman stated that "the central idea of copyleft is to use copyright law, but flip it over to serve the opposite of its usual purpose: instead of a means of privatizing software, [copyright] becomes

291-673: A copyright license may control the distribution of the source code or design documents, a patent license may control the use and manufacturing of the physical device built from the design documents. This distinction is explicitly mentioned in the preamble of the TAPR Open Hardware License : "... those who benefit from an OHL design may not bring lawsuits claiming that design infringes their patents or other intellectual property." Noteworthy licenses include: The Open Source Hardware Association recommends seven licenses which follow their open-source hardware definition . From

388-450: A digital equivalent where the user must click to accept. Open-source software has an additional acceptance mechanism. Without permission from the copyright holder, the law prohibits redistribution. Therefore, courts treat redistribution as acceptance of the license terms. These can include attribution provisions or source code provisions for copyleft licenses. Developers typically achieve compliance without lawsuits. Social pressures, like

485-599: A file-based definition, the CPL and EPL use a module-based definition, and the FSF's own LGPL refers to software libraries. License compatibility determines how code with different licenses can be distributed together. The goal of open-source licensing is to make the work freely available, but this becomes complicated when working with multiple terminologies imposing different requirements. There are many uncommonly used licenses and some projects write their own bespoke agreements. As

582-548: A free and open 3D graphics chip set and reference graphics card, Timothy Miller suggested the creation of an organization to safeguard the interests of the Open Graphics Project community. Thus, Patrick McNamara founded the Open Hardware Foundation (OHF) in 2007. The Tucson Amateur Packet Radio Corporation (TAPR), founded in 1982 as a non-profit organization of amateur radio operators with

679-471: A hub of activity due to the emergence of several major open-source hardware projects and companies, such as OpenCores , RepRap ( 3D printing ), Arduino , Adafruit , SparkFun , and Open Source Ecology . In 2007, Perens reactivated the openhardware.org website, but it's currently (August 2023) inactive. Following the Open Graphics Project , an effort to design, implement, and manufacture

776-403: A larger range of product categories such as machine tools, vehicles and medical equipment. In that sense, hardware refers to any form of tangible product, be it electronic hardware, mechanical hardware, textile or even construction hardware. The Open Source Hardware (OSHW) Definition 1.0 defines hardware as "tangible artifacts — machines, devices, or other physical things". Electronics is one of

873-436: A means of keeping software free." Free software licenses are also open-source software licenses. The separate terms free software and open-source software reflect different values rather than a legal difference. Both movements and their formal definitions require the covered work to be made available with source code and with permission for modification and redistribution. There are occasional edge cases where only one of

970-582: A particularly active area for open source ideas to move between them. Examples of open-source hardware products can also be found to a lesser extent in construction (Wikihouse), textile (Kit Zéro Kilomètres), and firearms ( 3D printed firearm , Defense Distributed ). Rather than creating a new license, some open-source hardware projects use existing, free and open-source software licenses. These licenses may not accord well with patent law . Later, several new licenses were proposed, designed to address issues specific to hardware design. In these licenses, many of

1067-424: A patent retaliation clause. Patent retaliation, or patent suspension, clauses take effect if a licensee initiates patent infringement litigation on covered code. In that situation, the patent grants are revoked. These clauses protect against patent trolling . Copyleft licenses require source code to be distributed with software and require the source code to be made available under a similar license. Like

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1164-583: A proprietary license, and the Balloon Project wrote their own license. The adjective "open-source" not only refers to a specific set of freedoms applying to a product, but also generally presupposes that the product is the object or the result of a "process that relies on the contributions of geographically dispersed developers via the Internet ." In practice however, in both fields of open-source hardware and open-source software, products may either be

1261-400: A result, this causes more confusion than other legal aspects. When releasing a collection of applications, each license can be considered separately. However, when attempting to combine software, code from another project can only be in-licensed if the project uses compatible terms and conditions. When combining code bases, the original licenses can be maintained for separate components, and

1358-952: A scientific journal HardwareX . It has featured many examples of applications of open-source hardware for scientific purposes. Further, Vasilis Kostakis  [ et ] et al have argued that open-source hardware may promote values of equity, diversity and sustainability. Open-source hardware initiative transcend traditional dichotomies of global-local, urban-rural, and developed-developing contexts. They may leverage cultural differences, environmental conditions, and local needs/resources, while embracing hyper-connectivity, to foster sustainability and collaboration rather than conflict. However, open-source hardware does face some challenges and contradictions. It must navigate tensions between inclusiveness, standardization, and functionality. Additionally, while open-source hardware may reduce pressure on natural resources and local populations, it still relies on energy- and material-intensive infrastructures, such as

1455-436: A similar license. Permissive licenses do not, and therefore the code can be used within proprietary software. Copyleft can be further divided into strong and weak depending on whether they define derivative works broadly or narrowly. Licenses focus on copyright law, but code is also covered by other forms of IP. Major open-source licenses written since the late 1990s contain patent grants. These open-source patent grants cover

1552-701: A specific open-source electronic component such as the Arduino electronics prototyping platform. There are many examples of specialty open-source electronics such as low-cost voltage and current GMAW open-source 3-D printer monitor and a robotics-assisted mass spectrometry assay platform. Open-source electronics finds various uses, including automation of chemical procedures. Open Standard chip designs are now common. OpenRISC (2000 - LGPL / GPL), OpenSparc (2005 - GPLv2), and RISC-V (2010 - Open Standard, free to implement for non-commercial purposes), are examples of free to use instruction set architecture . OpenCores

1649-616: Is a design that identifies the distinct source of a product. Because they distinguish products, the same designs can be used in different fields where there is no risk of confusing similar sources. To give up control of a trademark would result in the loss of that trademark. Therefore, no open-source license freely offers the use of a trademark. Trademark restrictions can overlap copyrights and affect material otherwise freely available. The US Supreme Court described using trademark law to restrict public domain content as "mutant copyright". In Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. ,

1746-429: Is a large library of standard chip design subcomponents which can be combined into larger designs. Complete open source software stacks and shuttle fabrication services are now available which can take OSH chip designs from hardware description languages to masks and ASIC fabrication on maker-scale budgets. Purely mechanical OSH designs include mechanical components, machine tools, and vehicles. Open Source Ecology

1843-755: Is a large project which seeks to develop a complete ecosystem of mechanical tools and components which aim to be able to replicate themselves. Open-source vehicles have also been developed including bicycles like XYZ Space Frame Vehicles and cars such as the Tabby OSVehicle. Most OSH systems combine elements of electronics and mechanics to form mechatronics systems. A large range of open-source mechatronic products have been developed, including machine tools, musical instruments, and medical equipment. Examples of open-source machine tools include 3D printers such as RepRap , Prusa , and Ultimaker , 3D printer filament extruders such as polystruder XR PRO as well as

1940-452: Is a set of conditions under which actions otherwise restricted by IP laws are permitted. Under the bare license interpretation, advocated by the FSF, a case is brought to court by the copyright holder as copyright infringement . Under the contract interpretation, a case can be brought to court by an involved party as a breach of contract . US and French courts have tried cases under both interpretations. Non-profit organizations like FSF and

2037-537: Is accepted as of 2016 by dozens of organizations and companies. In July 2011, CERN ( European Organization for Nuclear Research ) released an open-source hardware license, CERN OHL . Javier Serrano, an engineer at CERN's Beams Department and the founder of the Open Hardware Repository, explained: "By sharing designs openly, CERN expects to improve the quality of designs through peer review and to guarantee their users – including commercial companies –

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2134-526: Is an essential factor facilitating product replication and collaboration in hardware development projects. Practical guides have been developed to help practitioners to do so. Another option is to design products so they are easy to replicate, as exemplified in the concept of open-source appropriate technology . The process of developing open-source hardware in a community-based setting is alternatively called open design , open source development or open source product development . All these terms are examples of

2231-424: Is an ethical imperative for open-source hardware – specifically with respect to open-source appropriate technology for sustainable development . In 2014, he also wrote the book Open-Source Lab: How to Build Your Own Hardware and Reduce Research Costs , which details the development of free and open-source hardware primarily for scientists and university faculty . Pearce in partnership with Elsevier introduced

2328-584: Is how they define derivative works covered by the reciprocal provisions. The GPL, and the Affero License (AGPL) based on it, use a broad scope to describe affected works. The AGPL extends the reciprocal obligation in the GPL to cover software made available over a network. They are called strong copyleft in contrast to the weaker copyleft licenses often used by corporations. Weak copyleft uses narrower, explicit definitions of derivative works. The MPL uses

2425-543: Is more comprehensive and explicit. The Apache Software Foundation wrote it for their Apache HTTP Server . Version 2, published in 2004, offers legal advantages over simple licenses and provides similar grants. While the BSD and MIT licenses offer an implicit patent grant, the Apache License includes a section on patents with an explicit grant from contributors. Additionally, it is one of the few permissive licenses with

2522-565: Is now known as open-source hardware). In a 2015 article in Wired Magazine, he modified this attitude; he acknowledged the importance of free hardware, but still saw no ethical parallel with free software. Also, Stallman prefers the term free hardware design over open source hardware , a request which is consistent with his earlier rejection of the term open source software (see also Alternative terms for free software ). Other authors, such as Professor Joshua Pearce have argued there

2619-404: Is the continual process where developers can build on the derivative works of each other and combine their projects into collective works. Explicitly making covered code sublicensable provides a legal advantage when tracking the chain of authorship. The BSD and MIT are template licenses that can be adapted to any project. They are widely adapted and used by many FOSS projects. The Apache License

2716-821: Is the scientific community. There has been considerable work to produce open-source hardware for scientific hardware using a combination of open-source electronics and 3-D printing . Other sources of open-source hardware production are vendors of chips and other electronic components sponsoring contests with the provision that the participants and winners must share their designs. Circuit Cellar magazine organizes some of these contests. A guide has been published ( Open-Source Lab (book) by Joshua Pearce ) on using open-source electronics and 3D printing to make open-source labs . Today, scientists are creating many such labs. Examples include: Open hardware companies are experimenting with business models . For example, littleBits implements open-source business models by making available

2813-506: Is triggered when covered code is hosted or distributed. Some developers have adopted the AGPL, and others have switched to proprietary licenses with features of open-source licensing. For example, open-core developer Elastic switched from the Apache license to the "source-available" Server Side Public License . Source-available software comes with source code as a reference. Since 2010,

2910-623: The Creative Commons CC0, provides a waiver of copyright claims into the public domain along with a permissive software license as a fallback. In jurisdictions that do not accept a public domain waiver, the permissive license takes effect. Public domain waivers share limitations with simple academic licenses. This creates the possibility that an outside party could attempt to control a public domain work via patent or trademark law. Public domain waivers handle warranties differently from any type of license. Even very permissive ones, like

3007-625: The European Court of Justice noted in the 2012 SAS Institute case that "ideas and principles which underlie [computer program] interfaces are not protected by copyright". In a similar 2021 case , the US Supreme Court permitted the recreation of an API in a transformative product under fair use . A long-debated subject within the FOSS community is whether open-source licenses are "bare licenses" or contracts . A bare license

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3104-612: The Four Freedoms . The term hardware in open-source hardware has been historically used in opposition to the term software of open-source software. That is, to refer to the electronic hardware on which the software runs (see previous section). However, as more and more non-electronic hardware products are made open source (for example WikiHouse , OpenBeam or Hovalin), this term tends to be used back in its broader sense of "physical product". The field of open-source hardware has been shown to go beyond electronic hardware and to cover

3201-494: The GNU General Public License (GPL). Traditional, proprietary software licenses are written with the goal of increasing profit , but Stallman wrote the GPL to increase the body of available free software. His reciprocal licenses offer the rights to use, modify, and distribute the work on the condition that people must release derivative works under a license offering these same freedoms. Software built on

3298-1001: The Open Source Definition , co-founder of the Open Source Initiative , and a ham radio operator . He launched the Open Hardware Certification Program, which had the goal of allowing hardware manufacturers to self-certify their products as open. Shortly after the launch of the Open Hardware Certification Program, David Freeman announced the Open Hardware Specification Project (OHSpec), another attempt at licensing hardware components whose interfaces are available publicly and of creating an entirely new computing platform as an alternative to proprietary computing systems. In early 1999, Sepehr Kiani, Ryan Vallance and Samir Nayfeh joined efforts to apply

3395-536: The Open Source Initiative (OSI). At Debian , Perens had proposed the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG). The DFSG were drafted to provide a more specific and objective standard for the FOSS that Debian would host in their repositories. The OSI adopted the DSFG and used them as the basis for their Open Source Definition. The Free Software Foundation maintains a rival set of criteria,

3492-533: The Software Freedom Conservancy offer to hold the rights to developers' projects to enforce compliance. When a copyright expires, the work enters the public domain , and is freely available to anyone. Some creative works are not covered by copyright and enter directly into the public domain. In the early history of computing, this applied to software. Early computer software was often given away with hardware. Developed initially at MIT,

3589-446: The US and German courts rejected these claims. They ruled that the defendants could not have legally distributed the software if the licenses were unenforceable. Courts have found that distributing software indicates acceptance of the license's terms. Physical software releases can obtain the consumer's assent with notices placed on shrinkwrap . Online distribution can use clickwrap ,

3686-403: The bazaar , an open-air public market. He argued that aside from ethics, the open model provided advantages that proprietary software could not replicate. Raymond focused heavily on feedback , testing , and bug reports . He contrasted the proprietary model where small pools of secretive workers carried out this work with the development of Linux where the pool of testers included potentially

3783-400: The invention relies on another patented idea. Thus, open-source patent grants can offer permission only from covered patents. They cannot guarantee that a third party has not patented any concepts embodied in the code. The older permissive licenses do not discuss patents directly and offer only implicit patent grants in their offers to use or sell covered material. Newer copyleft licenses and

3880-474: The open-source model applicable for the development of any product, including software, hardware, cultural and educational. Does open design and open-source hardware design process involves new design practices, or raises requirements for new tools? is the question of openness really key in OSH?. See here for a delineation of these terms. A major contributor to the production of open-source hardware product designs

3977-440: The photovoltaic industry has experimented with partnerships, franchises, secondary supplier and completely open-source models. Recently, many open-source hardware projects have been funded via crowdfunding on platforms such as Indiegogo , Kickstarter , or Crowd Supply . Richard Stallman , the founder of the free software movement, was in 1999 skeptical on the idea and relevance of free hardware (his terminology for what

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4074-406: The 2004 Apache License offer explicit patent grants and limited protection from patent litigation. These patent retaliation clauses protect developers by terminating grants for any party who initiates a patent lawsuit regarding covered software. Trademarks are the only form of IP not shared by free and open-source software. Trademarks on FOSS function the same as any other trademark. A trademark

4171-572: The FSF or the OSI accept a license, but the popular free software licenses are open source, including the GPL . Practical benefits to copyleft licenses have attracted commercial developers. Corporations have used and written reciprocal licenses with a narrower scope than the GPL. For example, Netscape drafted their own copyleft terms after rejecting permissive licenses for the Mozilla project. The GPL remains

4268-511: The Free Software Definition. Historically, these three organizations and their sets of criteria have been the notable authorities in determining whether a license covers free and open-source software. There is significant diversity among individual licenses but little difference between the rival definitions. The three definitions each require that people receiving covered software must be able to use, modify, and redistribute

4365-427: The GPL and are said to be GPL-compatible. GPL software can only be used under the GPL or AGPL. Permissive licenses are broadly compatible because they can cover separate parts of a project. Multiple licenses including the GPL and Apache License have been revised to enhance compatibility. Translation issues, ambiguity in licensing terms, and incompatibility of some licenses with the law in certain jurisdictions compound

4462-801: The Internet. Despite these complexities, Kostakis et al argue, the open-source hardware framework can serve as a catalyst for connecting and unifying diverse local initiatives under radical narratives, thus inspiring genuine change. OSH has grown as an academic field through the two journals Journal of Open Hardware (JOH) and HardwareX . These journals compete to publish the best OSH designs, and each define their own requirements for what constitutes acceptable quality of design documents, including specific requirements for build instructions, bill of materials, CAD files, and licences. These requirements are often used by other OSH projects to define how to do an OSH release. These journals also publish papers contributing to

4559-653: The MBNA cards continued to flow and the organization had $ 126,155.29 (and growing) in the bank. Then-executive-director, Jerritt Collord, told Lyman that he had gotten "burned out" and that the "largely one-man organization" was sitting idle after lackluster success with his Open Oregon Technology Center . In the Fall of 2005 the founding directors met, decided to clean up the organizational backlog and start funding FOSS projects again. In June 2005, Bank of America bought MBNA. In April 2007, Bank of America gave Linux Fund notice that

4656-479: The MIT license, disclaim warranty and liability. Anyone using the free software must accept this disclaimer as a condition. Because public domain content is available to everyone, the copyright waiver cannot impose a disclaimer. Open-source licenses allow other businesses to commercialize covered software. Work released under a permissive license can be incorporated into proprietary software. Permissive licenses permit

4753-959: The OSHW Definition and the concerted efforts of those involved with it. Openhardware.org, led by Bruce Perens, promotes and identifies practices that meet all the combined requirements of the Open Source Hardware Definition, the Open Source Definition, and the Four Freedoms of the Free Software Foundation Since 2014 openhardware.org is not online and seems to have ceased activity. The Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) at oshwa.org acts as hub of open-source hardware activity of all genres, while cooperating with other entities such as TAPR, CERN, and OSI. The OSHWA

4850-594: The TAPR Open Hardware License, Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 and GPL 3.0 license. Organizations tend to rally around a shared license. For example, OpenCores prefers the LGPL or a Modified BSD License , FreeCores insists on the GPL , Open Hardware Foundation promotes " copyleft or other permissive licenses", the Open Graphics Project uses a variety of licenses, including the MIT license , GPL , and

4947-505: The addition of new terms, including proprietary ones. Proprietary software has heavily integrated open-source code released under the Apache, BSD, and MIT licenses. Open core is a business model where developers release a core piece of software as open source and monetize a product containing it as proprietary software. The strong copyleft GPL is written to prevent distribution within proprietary software. Weak copyleft licenses impose specific requirements on derivative works that may allow

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5044-687: The affinity MasterCard program would be discontinued effective June 30, 2007. On July 1, 2007 US Bank released a Linux Fund Visa card. In August 2007 the IRS granted Linux Fund 501(c)(3) status. In May 2009 the Open Hardware Foundation joined Linux Fund. Prior to cancellation by Bank of America, Linux Fund was supporting about 10 different projects including Debian , the Wikimedia Foundation , Blender (software) , Free Geek , freenode , and OpenSSH . A typical grant

5141-553: The circuit designs in each electronics module, in accordance with the CERN Open Hardware License Version 1.2. Another example is Arduino , which registered its name as a trademark ; others may manufacture products from Arduino designs but cannot call the products Arduino products. There are many applicable business models for implementing some open-source hardware even in traditional firms. For example, to accelerate development and technical innovation,

5238-553: The cloud model has grown in prominence. Developers have criticized cloud companies that profit from hosting open-source software without contributing money or code upstream, comparing the practice to strip mining . Cloud computing leader Amazon Web Services has stated they comply with licenses and act in their customers' best interests. Open Hardware Foundation Linux Fund is an organization that has been raising money and making donations to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) projects since 1999. IRS 501(c)(3) status

5335-748: The court "caution[ed] against misuse or over-extension of trademark" law without providing a firm decision on those mutant copyrights. Trademark overlap can leave open-source and free content projects vulnerable to a "hostile takeover" if outside parties file for trademarks on derivative works. Notably, Andrey Duskin applied for trademarks on the SCP Foundation , a collaborative writing project, when creating derivative works based on SCP stories. Permissive licenses , also known as academic licenses, allow recipients to use, modify, and distribute software with no obligation to provide source code. Institutions created these licenses to distribute their creations to

5432-439: The covered code to be distributed within proprietary software in certain circumstances. Cloud computing relies on free and open-source software and avoids the distribution that triggers most licenses. Cloud software is hosted rather than distributed. A vendor hosts the software online, and their end users do not have to download, access, or even know about the code in use. The copyleft GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL)

5529-399: The covered software. The BSD licenses brought the concept of academic freedom of ideas to computing. Early academic software authors had shared code based on implied promises. Berkeley made these concepts explicit with clear disclaimers for liability and warranty along with conditions, or clauses , for redistribution. The original had four clauses, but subsequent versions have further reduced

5626-468: The covered work. Eric S. Raymond was a proponent of the term " open source " over "free software". He viewed open source as more appealing to businesses and more reflective of the tangible advantages of FOSS development. One of Raymond's goals was to expand the existing hacker community to include large commercial developers. In The Cathedral and the Bazaar , Raymond compared open-source development to

5723-452: The debate about how OSH should be defined and used. Open-source license Open-source licenses are software licenses that allow content to be used, modified, and shared. They facilitate free and open-source software (FOSS) development. Intellectual property (IP) laws restrict the modification and sharing of creative works. Free and open-source licenses use these existing legal structures for an inverse purpose. They grant

5820-410: The early to mid 2000s, FreeIO was a focus of free/open hardware designs released under the GNU General Public License . The FreeIO project advocated the concept of Free Hardware and proposed four freedoms that such hardware provided to users, based on the similar freedoms provided by free software licenses. The designs gained some notoriety due to Martin's naming scheme in which each free hardware project

5917-525: The entire world. He summarized this strength as "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." The OSI succeeded in bringing open-source development to corporate developers including Sun Microsystems, IBM , Netscape, Mozilla , Apache , Apple Inc., Microsoft, and Nokia. These companies released code under existing licenses and drafted their own to be approved by the OSI. Open-source licenses are categorized as copyleft or permissive . Copyleft licenses require derivative works to include source code under

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6014-477: The free software movement. Copyleft licenses require derivative works to be distributed with the source code and under a similar license. Since the mid-2000s, courts in multiple countries have upheld the terms of both types of license. Software developers have filed cases as copyright infringement and as breaches of contract. Intellectual property (IP) is a legal category that treats creative output as property, comparable to private property . Legal systems grant

6111-453: The freedom to study, modify and manufacture them, leading to better hardware and less duplication of efforts". While initially drafted to address CERN-specific concerns, such as tracing the impact of the organization's research, in its current form it can be used by anyone developing open-source hardware. Following the 2011 Open Hardware Summit, and after heated debates on licenses and what constitutes open-source hardware, Bruce Perens abandoned

6208-533: The fundamental principles expressed in open-source software (OSS) licenses have been "ported" to their counterpart hardware projects. New hardware licenses are often explained as the "hardware equivalent" of a well-known OSS license, such as the GPL , LGPL , or BSD license . Despite superficial similarities to software licenses , most hardware licenses are fundamentally different: by nature, they typically rely more heavily on patent law than on copyright law, as many hardware designs are not copyrightable. Whereas

6305-623: The general copyleft licenses the GNU General Public License (GPL) and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, from the hardware-specific copyleft licenses the CERN Open Hardware License (OHL) and TAPR Open Hardware License (OHL) and from the permissive licenses the FreeBSD license , the MIT license , and the Creative Commons Attribution license. Openhardware.org recommended in 2012

6402-628: The goals of supporting R&D efforts in the area of amateur digital communications, created in 2007 the first open hardware license, the TAPR Open Hardware License . The OSI president Eric S. Raymond expressed some concerns about certain aspects of the OHL and decided to not review the license. Around 2010 in context of the Freedom Defined project, the Open Hardware Definition was created as collaborative work of many and

6499-480: The hardware itself as well as the information on communication protocols that the software (usually in the form of device drivers ) must use in order to communicate with the hardware (often called register documentation, or open documentation for hardware), whereas open-source-friendly proprietary hardware would only include the latter without including the former. The first hardware-focused " open source " activities were started around 1997 by Bruce Perens , creator of

6596-653: The idea of zero cost and the freedom to use and modify information. While open-source hardware faces challenges in minimizing cost and reducing financial risks for individual project developers, some community members have proposed models to address these needs Given this, there are initiatives to develop sustainable community funding mechanisms, such as the Open Source Hardware Central Bank. Extensive discussion has taken place on ways to make open-source hardware as accessible as open-source software . Providing clear and detailed product documentation

6693-438: The initial release is considered an original work . The creator, or their employer, holds the copyright to this original work and therefore has the exclusive right to make copies, release modified versions, distribute copies, perform publicly, or display the work publicly. Modified versions of the original work are derivative works . When a creator modifies an existing work, they hold the copyright to their modifications. Unless

6790-423: The issue of proprietary device drivers for the free and open-source software community, however, it is not a pre-requisite for it, and should not be confused with the concept of open documentation for proprietary hardware, which is already sufficient for writing FLOSS device drivers and complete operating systems. The difference between the two concepts is that OSH includes both the instructions on how to replicate

6887-425: The larger work released under a compatible license. This compatibility is often one-way. Public domain content can be used anywhere as there is no copyright claim, but code acquired under any almost any set of terms cannot be waved to the public domain. Permissive licenses can be used within copyleft works, but copyleft material cannot be released under a permissive license. Some weak copyleft licenses can be used under

6984-428: The laser cutter Lasersaur . Examples of open source medical equipment include open-source ventilators , the echostethoscope echOpen, and a wide range of prosthetic hands listed in the review study by Ten Kate et.al. (e.g. OpenBionics' Prosthetic Hands). Open source robotics combines open source hardware mechatronics with open source AI and control software. Due to the mixture of hardware and software it serves as

7081-550: The license, increasing the difficulties of compliance. Free and open-source software licenses have been successfully enforced in civil court since the mid-2000s. In a pair of early lawsuits— Jacobsen v. Katzer in the United States and Welte v. Sitecom in Germany—;defendants argued that open-source licenses were invalid. Sitecom and Katzer separately argued that the licenses were unenforceable. Both

7178-468: The modern usage begins with Richard Stallman's efforts to create a free operating system. In 1984, programmer Don Hopkins mailed a manual to Stallman with a "Copyleft Ⓛ" sticker. Stallman, who was working on the GNU operating system, adopted the term. An early version of copyleft licensing was used for the 1985 release of GNU Emacs . The term became associated with the FSF's later reciprocal licenses, notably

7275-715: The most popular license of this type, but there are other significant examples. The FSF has crafted the Lesser General Public License (LGPL) for libraries . Mozilla uses the Mozilla Public License (MPL) for their releases, including Firefox . IBM drafted the Common Public License (CPL) and later adopted the Eclipse Public License (EPL). A difference between the GPL and other reciprocal licenses

7372-475: The most popular types of open-source hardware. PCB based designs can be published similarly to software as CAD files, which users can send directly to PCB fabrication companies and receive a build from them in the mail. Or users can obtain components and solder them together themselves. There are many companies that provide large varieties of open-source electronics such as Sparkfun , Adafruit , and Seeed. In addition, there are NPOs and companies that provide

7469-487: The open-source philosophy to machine design applications. Together they established the Open Design Foundation (ODF) as a non-profit corporation and set out to develop an Open Design Definition. However, most of these activities faded out after a few years. A "Free Hardware" organization, known as FreeIO, was started in the late 1990s by Diehl Martin, who also launched a FreeIO website in early 2000. In

7566-440: The opposite of their intended goal of restriction. Instead of imposing restrictions, free software explicitly provided freedoms to the recipient. In the 90s, the term "open source" was coined as an alternative label for free software, and specific criteria were laid out to determine which licenses covered free and open-source software. Two active members of the free software community, Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond , founded

7663-641: The original work was in the public domain, a derivative work can only be distributed with the permission of every copyright holder. In 1980, the US government amended the law to treat software as a literary work. Software released after this point was restricted by IP laws. At that time, American activist and programmer Richard Stallman was working as a graduate student at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory . Stallman witnessed fragmentation among software developers. He blamed

7760-510: The owner of an IP the right to restrict access in many ways. Owners can sell, lease, gift, or license their properties. Multiple types of IP law cover software including trademarks , patents , and copyrights . Most countries, including the United States (US), have created copyright laws in line with the Berne Convention . These laws assign a copyright whenever a work is released in any fixed format. Under US copyright law,

7857-446: The patents held by the developers. Software patents cover ideas and, rather than a specific implementation, cover any implementation of a claim . Patent claims give the holder the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, or importing products based on the idea. Because patents grant the right to exclude rather than the right to create, it is possible to have a patent on an idea but still be unable to legally implement it if

7954-470: The permissive licenses, most copyleft licenses require attribution. Most, including the GPL, disclaim implied warranties. Copyleft uses the restrictions of IP law—contrary to their usual purpose—to mandate that the code remain open. The term and it's related slogan, "All rights reversed", had been previously used in a playful manner by the Principia Discordia and Tiny BASIC ;

8051-561: The pioneering video game Spacewar! was used to market and test the PDP-1 computer. According to attorney Lawrence Rosen , copyright laws were not written with the expectation that creators would place their work into the public domain. Thus intellectual property laws lack clear paths to waive a copyright. Highly permissive licenses described as "public domain" may legally function as unilateral contracts that offer something but impose no terms. A public-domain-equivalent license , like

8148-928: The potential for community backlash, are often sufficient. Cease and desist letters are a common method to bring companies back into compliance, especially in Germany. A standard process has developed in the German legal system. FOSS developers present companies with a cease and desist letter. These letters outline how to come back into compliance from a violation. German judges can issue a court-mandated cease and desist order to unresponsive companies. Civil cases proceed if these first steps fail. The German procedural laws are clear and favorable to claimants. Uncertainties remain in how different courts will handle certain aspects of licensing. For software in general, there are debates about what can be patented and what can be copyrighted. Regarding an application programming interface (API),

8245-417: The problem of license compatibility. Downloading an open-source module is straightforward, but complying with the licensing terms can be more difficult. Because of the amount of software dependencies, engineers working on complex projects often rely on license management software to achieve compliance with the licensing terms of open-source components. Many open-source software files do not unambiguously state

8342-440: The project, ensure continuity in a context of fickle participation of voluntary project members, among others. One of the major differences between developing open-source software and developing open-source hardware is that hardware results in tangible outputs, which cost money to prototype and manufacture. As a result, the phrase "free as in speech, not as in beer", more-formally known as gratis versus libre , distinguishes between

8439-545: The public. Permissive licenses are usually short, often less than a page of text. They impose few conditions . Most include disclaimers of warranty and obligations to credit authors. A few include explicit provisions for patents, trademarks, and other forms of intellectual property. The University of California, Berkeley created the first open-source license when they began distributing their Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) operating system. The BSD license and its later variations permit modification and distribution of

8536-409: The recipient the rights to use the software, examine the source code , modify it, and distribute the modifications. These criteria are outlined in the Open Source Definition . After 1980, the United States began to treat software as a literary work covered by copyright law. Richard Stallman founded the free software movement in response to the rise of proprietary software . The term "open source"

8633-412: The restrictions. As a result, it's common to specify if the covered software uses a 2-clause or 3-clause version. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created an academic license based on the BSD original. The MIT license clarified the conditions by making them more explicit. For example, the MIT license describes the right to sublicense . One of the strengths of open-source development

8730-460: The result of a development process performed by a closed team in a private setting or by a community in a public environment, the first case being more frequent than the second which is more challenging. Establishing a community-based product development process faces several challenges such as: to find appropriate product data management tools, document not only the product but also the development process itself, accepting losing ubiquitous control over

8827-539: The spread of proprietary software and closed models of development. To push back against these trends, Stallman founded the free software movement . Throughout the 1980s, he started the GNU Project to create a free operating system, wrote essays on freedom, founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF), and wrote several free software licenses. The FSF used existing intellectual property laws for

8924-472: The summer of 1999 at the LinuxWorld Expo. By the summer of 2000, their Grants to Developers Program had begun. A few years after surviving the dot-com bubble, the organization fell into stagnation. In June 2005, investigating reports that their website was down, NewsForge 's Jay Lyman revealed that the organization was not actively distributing funds to FOSS projects. Lyman reported that funds from

9021-481: Was $ 500/month with renewable 6 and 12-month commitments. Linux Fund has also given lump-sum donations on the order of $ 1,000–$ 5,000. Project funding was frozen briefly when Bank of America canceled the USA MasterCard agreement. Funding has since resumed with the new US Bank Visa card. Current projects include a mix of open-source software and hardware projects including Gnash , Inkscape , LiVES , and

9118-747: Was established as an organization in June 2012 in Delaware and filed for tax exemption status in July 2013. After some debates about trademark interferences with the OSI, in 2012 the OSHWA and the OSI signed a co-existence agreement. The FOSSi Foundation is founded in 2015 as a UK -based non-profit to promote and protect the open source silicon chip movement, roughly a year after the official release of RISC-V architecture. The Free Software Foundation has suggested an alternative "free hardware" definition derived from

9215-409: Was given the name of a breakfast food such as Donut, Flapjack, Toast, etc. Martin's projects attracted a variety of hardware and software developers as well as other volunteers. Development of new open hardware designs at FreeIO ended in 2007 when Martin died of pancreatic cancer but the existing designs remain available from the organization's website. By the mid 2000s open-source hardware again became

9312-607: Was granted to Linux Fund in August 2007, allowing direct solicitations to individuals and charitable foundations. Prior to receiving the 501(c)(3) letter, the principal funding source had been an affinity credit card program with credit cards bearing a graphic of Tux , the Linux Penguin. Visa cards are offered in the US by US Bank . Linux Fund was founded at the peak of the 1999 high-tech boom with an affinity credit card from MBNA . They gave away their first T-shirt in

9409-630: Was used by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), founded by free software developers Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond . "Open source" emphasizes the strengths of the open development model rather than software freedoms. While the goals behind the terms are different, open-source licenses and free software licenses describe the same type of licenses. The two main categories of open-source licenses are permissive and copyleft . Both grant permission to change and distribute software. Typically, they require attribution and disclaim liability . Permissive licenses come from academia. Copyleft licenses come from

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