[OH Updates] TAPR meeting results

[Bruce Perens]

We had the TAPR meeting this weekend in Baltimore, after the Summit.

TAPR will deprecate the Non-Commercial License and will immediately 
apply the Open Hardware License to new work funded by TAPR.

We had previously used the Non-Commercial License to make sure we would 
recoup the investment in our first production run of the TAPR-funded 
http://openhpsdr.org/ boards. After that sold out, we applied the Open 
Hardware License. History in producing these boards shows that the NCL 
is not necessary to protect our revenue, and nobody ever turns the 
boards to add the OHL statement when it's time to do that. Boards after 
Hermes <http://openhpsdr.org/hermes.php> will include the OHL statement. 
Hermes will include the OHL statement in addendum, as the board has 
already been laid out.

We had a short discussion of whether we should remove some of the 
requirements in the TAPR Open Hardware License in order to get more 
parties to use the TAPR license. This was countered by concern among the 
leadership about the rather low standard for "open" in the Open Hardware 
community in general right now. They pointed out:

  * Some of the things featured at the Summit don't meet the Open
    Hardware Definition.
  * Some companies that are thought to be leaders in Open Hardware
    predominantly make breakout boards for ICs, with little design
    investment in them.
  * A lot of things said to be open just have a PDF for the schematic,
    no modifiable design files, and no gerber files.

So, the feeling at TAPR is that we should work to raise the standard for 
"open" in the community.

We're going to invest some funds in promoting the high design investment 
projects which have to a great extent been overlooked.

     Thanks

     Bruce
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openhardwaresummit.org/pipermail/updates-openhardwaresummit.org/attachments/20110919/17722882/attachment.htm>