According to the Open Source Hardware Association, Open Source Hardware (OSHW) is a term for tangible artifacts — machines, devices, or other physical things — whose design has been released to the public in such a way that anyone can make, modify, distribute, and use those things.
Hardware is different from software in that physical resources must always be committed for the creation of physical goods. Accordingly, persons or companies producing items (“products”) under an OSHW license have an obligation to make it clear that such products are not manufactured, sold, warrantied, or otherwise sanctioned by the original designer and also not to make use of any trademarks owned by the original designer.
The current best practice recommendation is to use different licenses for hardware, software, and any project documentation. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) maintains a set of open hardware licenses for projects interested in both permissive and reciprocal sharing.
Licensing OSHW Projects
- List of licenses on the Open Hardware Repository
- Software related to open source hardware can be licensed under any OSI-approved license
- Documentation can be shared under Creative Commons licenses