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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[-] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

It was in this thread here:

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/21153303

A company was calling their product Open Source because they published the source code and allowed anyone to modify it. But they didn't want Google taking their work for free. Lemmy users called them scammers/open source washers because they didn't want their work exploited by large corporations.

I still find it weird that Open Source defenders are adamant that you must allow large corporations to exploit your work or you are a fraud. I had no idea.