The Tucson Amateur Packet Radio (TAPR) organization is sponsoring a new open-source license intended for hardware components. Authored by lawyer John Ackermann, the Open Hardware License (OHL) is a share-alike license that developers can apply to documentation and schematics associated with hardware projects. The license stipulates that those who distribute products based on OHL-licensed hardware specifications may not file patent infringement lawsuits against others who use the same hardware specifications. The license also requires that developers post additional specifications to a centralized archive when they make a derivative of an OHL-licensed product.
Open Source Definition author and amateur radio enthusiast Bruce Perens has endorsed the OHL, and submitted it to the Open Source Institute (OSI) for evaluation. The OSI's initial response has been one of skepticism. OSI president Eric S. Raymond has offered support for the concept of open-source hardware, but has expressed some concerns about certain aspects of the OHL. According to Raymond, the license has "lots of problems." Most notably, Raymond says that it "strips the word 'distribution' of its normal meaning, assuring lots of contention over edge cases."
Other notable members of the OSI board have pointed out that existing OSI-approved licenses are already applicable to hardware. That particular sentiment undoubtedly stems from growing concerns about the confusion caused by open source license proliferation.
It seems unlikely that the OHL will be broadly used outside of the amateur radio community, but Perens and others believe that there is sufficient demand to justify creating a new license. It is worth noting that several prominent open source hardware projects are already distributed under other mainstream open source licenses. For instance, Sun's OpenSparc processor is distributed under the GPL. Drafts of the license are available on the Internet, and TAPR eagerly welcomes comments through March 7.
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