[License-review] For Approval – CERN Open Hardware Licence Version 2– Strongly Reciprocal (SPDX: CERN-OHL-S-2.0); CERN Open Hardware Licence Version 2– Weakly Reciprocal (SPDX: CERN-OHL-W-2.0); CERN Open Hardware Licence Version 2– Permissive (SPDX: CERN-OHL-P-2.0)

[Andrew Katz]

Hi Josh

Many thanks for your question. CERN-OHL *can* be applied to software at the option of the licensor, but that is not a requirement. The suite of licences was written with the ability to license software in mind, and some licensors will want the simplicity of having the entire design - hardware and software - available under the same licence. However, we also recognise that this can create problems, and we do not want to tempt people away from the software commons which have coalesced around well-recognised copyleft/reciprocal licences, particularly GPLv2 and GPLv3. 

Clearly, for the permissive variant of CERN-OHL, this is less of an issue, and CERN-OHL-P was drafted to be very similar (if not identical) to Apache 2.0 in effect. 

It may help to see our FAQ on this point:

https://ohwr.org/project/cernohl/wikis/faq#q-my-project-includes-hardware-and-software-how-do-i-make-sure-the-whole-product-is-distributed-together-and-stays-open-source

Kind regards




Andrew





> On 19 Nov 2020, at 01:29, Josh Berkus <josh at berkus.org> wrote:
> 
> Andrew:
> 
> When this license was introduced to License-Review, I was told in
> response to my question that it would cover embedded software included
> with open hardware designs.  However, reading over the User Guide, I see
> no reference whatsoever to embedded software, just to software used to
> create designs.  Further, according to the examples given, the license
> isn't for that software, it's just for the designs themselves.
> 
> What software is this license intended to cover, if any?  It's hard for
> me to interpret it without clearly understanding that.
> 
> -- 
> Josh Berkus
> 
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