Fwd: [openip] Comments/License

[khatib@ieee.org]

Begin forwarded message:

Below there are some statments from hardlicense-discuss mailing list


Graham>
I had been working with a different analogy: schematic layout
corresponds
to source, gerber file corresponds to binary, physical hardware
corresponds
to CD with executable program on it. I feel this analogy is better
because
it makes it clear that there are many different equivalents to the
binary
(gerber file, FPGA bitstream, ASIC layout file etc) each of which may
involve different legal problems.
Would you agree with this? 

I agree with Graham on this definition. I think I said a kind of
analogy in one of my old mails to openip mailing list

RMS>
That analogy makes sense, and might be useful for some purposes.  But
it is not useful for copyright issues, because copyright does not
treat the two cases in analogous ways.  The CD with an executable
program is copyrightable and therefore is covered by copyright.  The
physical hardware is not.

Even if the hardware is not copyrighted but you can not make an illegal
copy of it by remanufactoring it.


Since there is no clear way to protect the designs ( copyright, patent,
NDA......) even for commerical designs, we can use a simple licnese for
now untill a new way of protection is found.

Please I want to know what are the open issues you think about the
OHGPL?

Thanks
Jamil Khatib
OpenIP Organization
http://www.openip.org