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this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2025
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That isn't an open source licence....
While the firmware could be using a classic software license, in the hardware world these licenses don't mean much. Afaik Creative Commons licenses are what's generally used for open hardware
Non commercial means nobody else can sell it, so even if you print one for a friend you can't legally recoup the costs from them
This would be allowed from my understanding of the license. You are not gaining commercial advantage or monetary compensation from "selling" it at cost to your friend once
One of the (many) problems with non-commercial licences is that "commercial" is really hard to define, and case law varies between countries.
That's true, but that's why there is a wiki page explaining the intent of the NonCommercial CC license.
I believe you can. I'm not a lawyer, but over the years the NC clause of Creative Commons has been interpreted to mean that you can't make a profit from sales of the product; recovering your production costs has typically been allowed. I believe that there used to be an example to that end on the CC FAQ, but I'm not sure.
In any instance, the copyright holder is allowed to offer additional or alternate terms. They may very well say "you can sell a printer made from these plans, but the sale price may not exceed your cost of the materials used" when they release it.
So your friend buys all the components and a case of beer (or non alcoholic equivalent) and asks you to help assemble it?