kicad-developers team mailing list archive

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

On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 8:34 PM, José Ignacio <jose.cyborg@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 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.
>

 I think this is a justified concern. But I would have thought the addendum
would allow you to edit e.g a pad size in a layout without the need to feed
those changes back to the community. That obligation would only kick in if
you publish a modified version of the library or the component within. In
any case, yes, a weak copyleft licence imposes more work on users who
modify and publish modifications. That's true. The assumption is typically
that the extra work is justified by the benefits it brings to more people.
Does that assumption hold here? I don't know. Maybe other people who spend
lots of time drawing symbols, footprints and 3D models could chime in as
well. Another potential problem with weak copyleft is that some people
might choose not to use the libraries because of the perceived heaviness of
obligations. Again, I am unable to judge if this would be a problem in this
case, and would be very interested in reading more opinions.

One important point I raised earlier remains though, irrespective of
whether we use CC-BY-SA or CC0: we need to identify the copyright holders
and prepend the license notice with a proper copyright notice. Assuming
these things are copyrightable, and many surely are, the default is "all
rights reserved." This means that if I publish a symbol in a KiCad library
and I don't add any licence notice, you cannot be 100% sure I will not sue
you for copyright infringement if you publish schematics which use that
symbol. My way of guaranteeing to you that I will not sue is precisely to
include the licence header. And because only I, as a copyright holder, have
the right to include that header, it is good etiquette to inform the world
that it's me by inserting the copyright notice just before the licence
notice.

Cheers,

Javier