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

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.
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.
Type: Webpage. Title: "About CC Licenses". Publisher: "Creative Commons". Accessed: 2025-04-09T21:31Z. URI: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/.
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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[-] communism@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago

That's part of what FOSS people mean by free/libre. The user (which may be a company) is not restricted in what they do with the software and source code. If it's copyleft, then the only restriction is share-alike/that it remains libre and open. So that includes the right to make a profit.

There are non-FOSS licences you can use if you only want non-commercial use, or want to apply various restrictions whilst still keeping things foss-like (in the sense that most people can e.g. fork it and generally do what they want with it, but in some scenarios/to some users it will not be foss), but they aren't considered FOSS.