Dave, you are awesome, you make some great videos and are one of the top guys around however, I am sorry to really disagree with you on some of this, please hear me out, it's something I have put a lot of time and thought in to and I have walked the walk. I noticed on youtube channel you replied to people that disagreed with stance with comments like "where is your open hardware", this is why I posted here. I have quite a lot of it and currently I run an Australian based project called OpenPilot. It's not some dev tools or anything like that, it's a fully finished product in a market that is extremely popular, many of our original ideas and hardware innovations have been adopted by others, often without any credit unfortunately.
What your video states is you want the NC license's protection but not to actually use it. I've seen that before and just like them you try to tack on amendments to the end of the CC-BY-SA for what you want it to be, however, that is not really how it works. Your argument against the NC does not seem valid at all; that people would sue each other? Not at all, using the NC simply states "I don't to be free corporate welfare for someone else". I have however seen projects using the CC-BY-SA threaten to sue people and file take down requests for legal hardware, yes really.
Sorry, there are no unwritten rules, that is why they are unwritten, what you state as your opinion and what you would like is not what I would like, that is why we pick a particular license; that covers our terms and what we want without any other rules being added. I have made some CC-BY-SA hardware and I want people to clone it. I used that license specifically for that purpose despite some of it costing a load of money to make. We have a project in the works that has so far cost $5000, this will also be CC-BY-SA as we want clones of it and is a huge gift to the whole community at large, we are doing this as it is something badly needed.
I have also made hardware using the NC license, the core of OpenPilot's hardware uses the NC, I want it to be open so people can look and learn from it, make their own versions non-commercially which many have done but simply I do not want commercial works or clones based off it as it would hurt the project I am involved in. In fact in my experience, this creates a great balance, people can tinker but also can't reat you as a sucker. I want that strictly to stay as a hobby only, as soon as money making gets involved things can and do turn ugly, seen it in the past. Additionally, OpenPilot is a non-profit anyway, we like it that way, we are not about to be someone's free staff, that is not a good feeling and not at all why we do this.
I also use the GPL, there are parts of that I do not like, however it is the closest fit to my needs but most off all I do not try and add bits to the end of it that are simply not there, I have to live with the parts I do not really like; in that case I also get the benefits of other GPL software. I always have the option to change license however, the good outweighs the bad with the GPL. With the CC-BY-SA in some cases the bad strongly outweighs the good, which is why I use the NC in those cases as it's a better fit. What I don't do not is try to add extra parts on to the CC-BY-SA license as that is simply not cricket, how will people actually know what I want? They read the license and stick to it, then all is well.
If your unwritten rules were followed, I would use the CC-BY-SA in a heartbeat for that NC hardware, but they are not and most importantly that is not what the CC-BY-SA states at all, in fact also here's the OSHW definition:
http://freedomdefined.org/OSHWOpen source hardware is hardware whose design is made publicly available so that anyone can study, modify, distribute, make, and sell the design or hardware based on that design.
Not only does the CC-BY-SA allow it, the people behind Open Source hardware have that as their first sentence in their Statement of Principles, clones are certainly encouraged. How are people to know your unwritten rules apply to your stuff and not to anyone elses that uses Open Hardware and the same license? The license you have selected and the people behind Open Hardware specifically state that it is OK to do what you disagree with.
Here's something else that is odd about open hardware, it's never actually developed in the open like software except in a few rare cases, the complete development cycle is closed to any community participation, it's only open once it is done and up for sale, in some cases not even that.
Hardware is a different beast to software, trying to make it fit in the same hole like the OSHW guys are trying is not going to work. With Free Software for example there are many cases where you can reuse a library or a whle frame work, I have never done this with hardware, I have my own ideas and I make them. I don't take other people's work and modify it, it just doesn't work that way with hardware at all. On top of that software is never finished, hardware however is; it's prototyped, tested and then released. Why take a working design and "innovate" when you can take a working design and start making money on day 1? After all you have a fully tested and working design. Sorry but this is just common sense and it seems more what OSHW was designed for as simply most HW guys do their own designs rather than start from someone elses.
There are parts of the NC license I do not like either, it is not a perfect match, however here's the reality: If I spend, time, money and energy creating an idea and making something cool and it just gets cloned and ripped off, I am not going to keep dong that for very long. I could play all kinds of sly games, I've seen other projects do that but I would prefer to stay honest and not use weasel tactics so use the NC. This means everyone wins, we can test our hardware correctly and release just one solid version, I've seen so called Open Hardware projects release version after version after version all to stay ahead of the cloners, who loses? Your customers do and it's unfair.
I also do not have the financial means to benefit from the economies of scale that places like seeedstudio have, if they were legally allowed to clone our hardware, that would really hurt the project as it's not sustainable or we would have to start playing the dirty tricks I've seen elsewhere and hurt the people who actually buy your hardware.
Ultimately we come from the same view points, if there was a license that had your rules as gospel, I would use it, but, the license does not say that and the people behind OSHW do not say that either, the
rules are in the license, don't like it? Use a different one or even write your own.
One thing I really dislike about this OSHW meme that is going around, the false equivalence with Open to mean "let others profit from it", funny how many people don't spot this; if you go and view an open house, it's doesn't mean it's open for you to move in. In software, Open Source covers a wide spectrum of licenses, some people have the source open but with varying restrictions.
From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_licenseSome open-source licenses only permit modification of the source code for personal use or only permit non-commercial redistribution
Yet this marketing drive by the OSHW to mean only clone allowable hardware is open is weird unless you look at some of the key people behind it, you would not at all be surprised it's people that have Open Source manufacturing business, how odd. So I find fairly insidious that they are driving to make open and commercially exploitable synonymous, they are simply not. In software they are not and in the English language they are not.
I used to be a huge fan of OSHW if it would mean people can learn from things and we all get some benefit like in the old days with the electronics magazines etc, alas there are more and more people looking to short circuit people's kindness and simply use as a one way system to transfer wealth. It can work for simple products, no question; breakout boards, even Ardunio which a dev board and needs little development but as things scale in complexity and function, the more it seems like a poor idea and all you are being is unpaid staff for someone elses business. There are also a growing bunch so called Open Hardware entrepreneurs, they search the we looking for products that are complete they can just legally make, many of course based in China, I am sure they think it's Christmas come early.
I spoke to one of these guys last year via email, here part of the exchange:
> but why not make things better, add improvements and have your own version, you know, add some value?
Why would I want to do that! Say I made mistake? Or make things worse, then what! I lose money and time. If I take designs that works then I do not have to do anything but manufacture. No testing of changes or problems to solve, the most changes I make is the silk layer sometimes to change the name!
The OpenPilot project has more open hardware than any other project, we use the NC license and that stops silly games being played so we release gerbers, a complete BOM with Digikey part numbers, all design files, assembly sheets and even 3D renders, we do this for every version of hardware we make. I find it so ironic that many projects with CC-BY-SA licenses do not do that at all, you might get the Eagle files dumped out eventually and only for one version of the hardware but little else.
In the end the OpenPilot community wins real big, we release everything we used to make the boards but the people looking for a free lunch that would harm the project do not get it.
Anyway, just a long opinion based on what I have seen over a long period of time and some lessons I have had to learn, hope it is helpful.
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