kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Javier Serrano <javier.serrano.pareja@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Feb 26, 2017 at 11:55 PM, Cirilo Bernardo <cirilo.bernardo@xxxxxxxxx
> wrote:

>
> That depends on what you mean by 'free'. If the output is Public Domain
> then
> anyone can use it for whatever purpose they like and have no obligations.
>

Strictly speaking, I don't think we can actually put a creation of the type
typically covered by copyright in the public domain. Copyright kicks in by
default in most jurisdictions. Public domain is what happens when something
is *not* subject to copyright. This can be because the law of a particular
country says so, like in the case of US Government works [1] or, in the
case of work of "normal" individuals, when copyright has expired. The
closest to public domain you can get for things like images is a CC0
license [2]. It says that you waive your rights under copyright law but
only "to the extent allowed by law."

So CC0 is definitely an option, and so is CC-SA if you want people who
modify symbols/footprints/etc and publish the results, to do so under the
same licensing. In that case, we need an additional statement clarifying
that this obligation does not extend to the whole schematics/layout and
other composite works.

Cheers,

Javier

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/105
[2] https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/