kicad-developers team mailing list archive

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

On Sat, Jul 1, 2017 at 10:35 AM, Oliver Walters <
oliver.henry.walters@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
> After that, people who contribute new symbols/fottprints/models should
>> make copyright and license notices part of that submission, exactly as for
>> source code.
>
>
> This is going to be very burdensome - it is already quite a lot of work to
> submit symbols / footprints against the KLC (KiCad Library Convention).
> Requiring users to add license files will:
>
> a) Bloat the libraries
>
> b) Be beyond the ability or patience of most contributors.
>
> I would strongly prefer an approach that essentially says "If you
> contribute to the library, the symbols / footprints will be placed under
> the existing license available in the LICENSE file."
>
>  I had been operating under the assumption that we only had to consider
> the license that applies to library data AFTER they have been accepted into
> the library.
>
> Allowing per-file licensing is going to be a real mess.
>

I understand your feeling. However, I think the fact that things will be
more burdensome in the future is:

a) inevitable once you accept many of the symbols, footprints and models
are the subject of copyright.
b) not (very) related to a given choice of license.

Not dealing with this properly exposes users to legal uncertainty, as I
argued earlier. There are many ways of dealing with this, and all have been
tested in the source code realm. What you suggest, for example, is very
similar to "Contributor License Agreements", which have their pros and
cons, documented extensively on the Internet. The owner of a symbol is its
creator. (S)he can then decide to grant rights through a license or give
you or any other person the right to do so on his/her behalf. But all of
this has to be done explicitly. There is no magic way of doing it without
any extra burden.

I am a bit sorry to bring in all these complications, but I think as KiCad
gains a larger user base, in particular commercial users, we need to be a
bit more solid on the legal side of things. Hopefully we get to a state
where library contributors don't see this as much of an extra burden, as is
already the case for source code contributors.

Cheers,

Javier