On 2006-10-12 12:51 +0100, David Bisset wrote:
> >But what about schematics? This is supposed to be an open design, and
> >B3 schematics have been unobtainium for months now. Is there some
> >problem?
>
> Yes it is an open design,
>
> But yes there is a problem.
>
> I am happy to release schematics for P2 provided we can agree on a suitable
> license text. It is the designers that carry the most risk from releasing
> schematics and they need to be protected by a legally approved license.
> Currently I'm not aware that we have agreed one.
>
> I think this was on the TBD list from the last users group, but as far as I
> am aware nothing has been agreed.
> I was about to add outstanding items from UG1 to the Agenda for UG2.
OK. That does indeed sound like something we need to cover at the
meeting.
My understanding was that essentially 'steve got to decide',
although it is not really a one-man design anymore, I suspect, so it's
probably something to agree collectively, or at least amongst the
hardware people.
I discussed this with Steve a few weeks ago and he essentially was
happy to use the existing Balloon2 licence, but probably with a bit
more leeway for people to make modifications and derivatives (which I
think is good).
I have started a meeting agenda wiki page
http://balloonboard.org/balloonwiki/MeetingNov2006
I must admit to not appreciating what risks you want to be protected
from. Seems to me the licence design is entirely about what sort of
acts we wish to (attempt to) permit or forbid with the design info,
not about butt-covering, but I may simply be insuficiently informed of
the terrible consequences of publishing PDFs which could be used to
construct very expensive bomb-timers :-)
> As an interim solution I'm happy to post the 12 Megs of Smart PDF to anyone
> who has a P2/E1 board. But please make sure you have sufficient inbox space
> to receive it, my recent experience with shipping even 1 meg files is that
> many people don't.
OK. I have a board, and plenty of inbox, please send one. HTTP is of
course a much better medium for such transfers :-)
Not putting them up because don't have a licence makes little sense,
because if you just put them up as-is then they have the default 'All
rights reserved' (Copyright Balloonboard.org or David Bisset, or
whatever). We can loosen them later, as desired. The only thing you
lose is the opportunity to keep them a trade secret, which I don't
think anyone wants anyway.
> Any thoughts on a suitable license?
lets check we agree principles before choosing wording.
IMHO the schematics should simply be available under GPL, GFDL, MIT or CC
licence. Which of those depends on whether we want to require changes
back, or allow people to use them in closed designs. I vote for GPL.
We could choose to supply schematics only with boards, even under the
GPL if we so wished, but I am not in favour of that.
The tricky bit (in terms of level of openness desired) is not the
schematics (which is why I am slightly surprised at your reticence),
but the protel design/layout info.
Wookey
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