Re: gEDA-dev: Rant on GPL confussion in regards to geda symbols

[Steve Meier <smeier-at-NOSPAMalchemyresearch_dot_com>]

This is a reasonable distribution that woukld allow proprietary use of
symbols for constructing boards. It isn't that different from the lgpl.

Why not state, these symbols may be incoroprated into designs without
requiring the design to fall under the GPL. However, upon request of
either the symbols author or a user of the electronics any changes in
the symbol must be given out freely. Any symbols which are modifications
of symbols which originated from the gedasymbols.org repocitory must be
submitted back to gedasymbols.org for the use of others.

While this might not be practicaly enforcable it would encourage a
growth in the repocitories library.

Best Wishes,

Steve Meier




On Thu, 2007-03-15 at 11:41 -0400, DJ Delorie wrote:
> > At least one of the PCB developers clearly stated that his PCB
> > landpatterns were not covered by the GPL.
> 
> The general consensus on gedasymbols.org at least, is that symbols and
> footprints are GPLd *until you use them*.  Once embedded, they become
> "unlimited use".  It's a complicated issue, like fonts, and like
> fonts, we're trying to prevent someone from taking the geda libraries
> and producing proprietary libraries for other EDA systems, but not
> trying to stop you from using the libraries to produce products.
> 
> I wish there were a better way to document and enforce this desire,
> but the use of ASCII formats makes it very easy to extract symbols and
> footprints from a working project (heck, pcb gives you a menu entry
> that does it).  On gedasymbols.org we've adopted a dual-tag license
> scheme; you can assign one license to distribution and a different one
> to use.
> 
> I don't see how symbols' license can apply to a built board, since
> there's no trace (sic) of the symbol remaining once the board is
> built.  And even footprints are only barely represented once the board
> is fab'd and populated.  And given that the part specs tell us what a
> footprint is supposed to look like, I don't think there's anything
> copyrightable left of a footprint after fab.
> 
> At least, that's my opinion, and my gedasymbols files are tagged
> "unlimited use".
> 
> 
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