kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[José Ignacio <jose.cyborg@xxxxxxxxx>]

Part of my argument is that for footprints and symbols there isn't much to
improve, they are either correct or they aren't, once a footprint is done
it probably should not be ever modified individually, most changes you
usually want to do to a library are sweeping and probably even automated,
those tools to manipulate the libraries should be copylefted, as any
improvements contributed back to them would be a great help for maintaining
the library and since the license of those scripts would not influence the
output people can use them not only in the publicly available symbols but
their own internal libraries too (allowing for people like me to use their
paid time to work on such tools). Here is the commit count for the
footprints in Chris' library: https://pastebin.com/raw/XjSggYJR virtually
all the manually created footprints were only edited once or not at all
since created. The larger changes happened to the IPC footprints, which
were automatically generated from a script tracked in the same repository.
A cursory look at the official kicad footprint repos shows a similar
pattern. You really want people to publish their footprints rather than
just "improvements", and copyleft is not enough to enforce that since
people can just put their footprints in their own library and not share
them with anyone.

 All in all probably the largest incentive to make people contribute back
to the commons is to make it very convenient rather than just choosing a
license that mandates it and letting people figure it out.

PS: another inconvenience for the license is section 3.a, attribution.
There is no automated way to generate a proper attribution list from the
schematic/layout, since each library is housed in a different repository
with different contributors it can get pretty unwieldy. Also, even though
section 3.b is waived by that addendum you are still required by section
3.a.1.B to "indicate if You modified the Licensed Material and retain an
indication of any previous modifications" Untracked modifications are easy
to do when you have an embedded footprint in the board and you do things
like changing a pad size, hole size or layers. Keeping track of all that
information is pretty onerous in my opinion.

On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 9:21 AM, Javier Serrano <
javier.serrano.pareja@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 3:28 PM, Simon Richter <Simon.Richter@xxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> On 29.06.2017 12:18, Javier Serrano wrote:
>>
>> > I agree the creative side is stronger for symbols than for footprints.
>> > Copyrightability is, as you well point out, a subject of debate in
>> > various areas. However, I think the real debate we should have is
>> > whether we want to make the official libraries permissive or weak
>> > copyleft.
>>
>> I'd be completely fine with PD/CC0 for symbols and footprints, because
>> they need to be available to users without having to check license
>> compatibility first.
>>
>> If people are using 3D models for more than nice renderings (e.g. to
>> determine the cutout from the case), then a permissive license would be
>> required here as well in order to avoid complications for the
>> manufacturing files.
>>
>
> Please see my comment below on the paragraphs we proposed.
>
>
>
>>
>> > I am not sure I understand the argument. There are clearly more risks of
>> > proprietarization whenever you use a permissive license, because you are
>> > explicitly giving permission to improve and not share back.
>>
>> Designing a license that would require people to share library
>> improvements but not their PCB designs would be difficult.
>>
>>
> Wait, what you describe as "difficult" is what the paragraphs we submitted
> do. They are written by a lawyer, and I don't see how they could be
> misinterpreted. Incidentally, geda does the same, except taking GPL as a
> basis instead of CC-BY-SA:
>
> http://wiki.geda-project.org/geda:license
>
> Again, for me the question is: do we want to *explicitly* allow people to
> take components of a library, improve them and not share the improvements
> back? If yes, CC0. If not, CC-BY-SA with the proposed paragraphs to clarify
> that the license provisions do not extend to the whole schematics, layout
> or circuit model.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Javier
>
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