[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)

[Josh Berkus]

On 11/19/20 7:26 AM, Andrew Katz wrote:
> 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. 

So this approach of "you aren't MEANT to use them for software, but you
CAN use them for software" creates some fundamental problems, and I'm
not convinced that those problems are surmountable.

For example, you've set up this intricate maze of Source, Covered
Source, Available Components, and Complete Source that's really quite
hard to decipher, at least for a software geek like me.  When I check
your FAQ, it offers me zero help or interpretation on these for normal,
standard software situations; 100% of the guidance is about either
designs, 3rd-party design software, or the actual hardware.  Firmware is
not mentioned at all; the word doesn't even appear.

There's also that this kind of dependencies among various kinds of
source may be common, and understood, in the Open Hardware world (is
it?), but in the OSS world the terminology is all new and very confusing.

-- 
Josh Berkus