kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[José Ignacio <jose.cyborg@xxxxxxxxx>]

My two cents. All this copyleft licensing stuff for _libraries_ is
over-complicating things, copyright on stuff like footprints and accurate
3d models is fairly tenuous as the representation of the work is very
tightly constrained by engineering concerns and standardization, and a good
chunk are (or can be) machine generated from databases already in the
public domain.

There are already two repositories of kicad footprints and symbols in the
public domain (or CC0 where not allowed) that I use heavily and
occasionally contribute to: https://github.com/cpavlina/kicad-schlib
https://github.com/cpavlina/kicad-pcblib I am not trying to undermine the
official kicad library effort, but I mention this if people are not aware,
and would like to contribute to the public domain.

My kicad use is almost exclusively commercial but I contribute every new
symbol and footprint I make (except the ones that are so project specific
that would be absolutely useless for anyone else, or by client's specific
request) back to the public domain in my fork of those repos (
https://github.com/iromero91/kicad-pcblib
https://github.com/iromero91/kicad-schlib) partly because of the way those
libraries are intended to be used, it is much easier to publish stuff than
hoard it, no license needs to compel me to do it.

Just to clarify, I have no issues with copyleft in general, specially I
think copyleft is beneficial for software and tools like kicad, or even
tools like footprint, symbol and model generators, I just feel it is not
quite right to have their license extend to generated items when the input
data could be part of a public domain database; Or to worry too much about
claiming copyright on each little symbol or footprint whose main design
elements are either copied from manufacturer recommendations or
mechanically/slavishly derived from such and current industry standards.

I understand that generating and maintaining a database of components is a
lot of work, and people don't like being taken advantage of, but copyright
might be the wrong tool for the job. What would be the real risk we are
protecting ourselves against with a defensive license on the libraries? For
kicad itself there is a risk people like some pcb manufacturers that like
to have their own branded tools could take it, add things to it, build an
userbase and then not contribute back to the main project. I don't feel the
same would happen with libraries, how would it fragment the community? If
something is public domain people can't just slap their copyright on top of
it and try to enforce it, specially if the whole public domain database is
already included with the software for everyone to see.

Sorry for the long ramble,
Jose


On Wed, Jun 28, 2017 at 6:24 AM, Oliver Walters <
oliver.henry.walters@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Wayne, Maciej, et al,
>
> This has been sitting in my //todo for a while. Can I get some
> clarification on the LICENSE issue and then I will ensure it is applied to
> the repos:
>
> Am I correct in my understanding that the following text is ALL that is
> required (placed within a LICENSE file in each repo)?
>
> "This work is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0 License.
>> To the extent that circuit schematics that use Licensed Material can be
>> considered to be ‘Adapted Material’, then the copyright holder waives
>> article 3.b of the license with respect to these schematics."
>
>
> Or is this an addendum required to be made and I am required to include
> the entire CC-BY-SA text?
>
> Regards,
> Oliver
>
> On Tue, Apr 11, 2017 at 6:41 AM, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
>> I prefer the former.  Adding the license to fields would be cumbersome.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Wayne
>>
>> On 4/10/2017 4:43 PM, Maciej Suminski wrote:
>> > The easiest way to include the license is to put a file containing the
>> > text in the libraries repository. Alternatively, the text could be
>> > stored in the 'License' field for symbols or 'Doc' property for
>> > footprints, but it feels a bit too wordy to me.
>> >
>> > Cheers,
>> > Orson
>> >
>> > On 04/07/2017 11:55 AM, Javier Serrano wrote:
>> >> On Sun, Feb 26, 2017 at 6:21 PM, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx
>> >
>> >> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> I'm still waiting for our friends at CERN for an answer on library
>> >>> licensing.  We are leaning towards CC-SA with the use exception
>> clause.
>> >>> I turning out to be the longest time ever to write a single sentence.
>> ;)
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >> OK, better late than never. Here are the proposals:
>> >>
>> >> For schematics symbols and for complete symbol libraries:
>> >>
>> >> "This work is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0 License.
>> >> To the extent that circuit schematics that use Licensed Material can be
>> >> considered to be ‘Adapted Material’, then the copyright holder waives
>> >> article 3.b of the license with respect to these schematics."
>> >>
>> >> For footprints and libraries of footprints:
>> >>
>> >> "This work is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0 License.
>> >> To the extent that circuit layout that uses Licensed Material can be
>> >> considered to be ‘Adapted Material’, then the copyright holder waives
>> >> article 3.b of the license with respect to this layout."
>> >>
>> >> This assumes we want a "weak copyleft" regime for libraries, i.e. we
>> want
>> >> modifications to symbols/footprints/libraries to be published under the
>> >> same license, but we don't want to force people to publish their
>> complete
>> >> designs under CC-BY-SA just because they used the KiCad libraries. Then
>> >> there is the issue of how to embed this information in symbols, symbol
>> >> libraries, footprints and footprint libraries. I am not competent to
>> >> comment on that.
>> >>
>> >> Cheers,
>> >>
>> >> Javier
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> _______________________________________________
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>
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