Open Hardware License hits 1.1

CERN'S OPEN HARDWARE REPOSITORY has published the Open Hardware License (OHL) version 1.1 in a bid to create a legal framework for the electronic design community, the hardware equivalent of open software licensing.

Inspired to openness by the success of open software, the goal of the OHL is to enable the exchange of knowledge and through that the study, modification, improvement and sharing of hardware designs, without the legal constraints of proprietary hardware development.

This will allow a community of electronics designers to look at and review their peers' work, keeping the standard of development and quality of designs high. The design sharing aspect will focus on hardware design documentation such as schematic diagrams, PCB layouts, mechanical drawings and descriptive texts, as well as other explanatory material. Add to that the input of hundreds of electronics engineering boffins and you're almost home.

Version 1.1 of the OHL "integrates feedback received from the community in order to follow generally accepted principles of the free and open source movements," said Myriam Ayass, legal advisor for CERN's knowledge transfer group, "and purports to make the CERN OHL even more easily usable by entities other than CERN". Ultimately, CERN hopes OHL will become to hardware what the GPL is to software.

This isn't the first attempt at creating an open hardware license, however, but it is probably the most substantial one yet. CERN's OHL has a competitor, the TAPR (Tucson Amateur Packet Radio) OHL, which - although not sharing the notoriety of CERN - has been around since 2007.

You can read the terms of the OHL here, while a full list of currently open hardware projects can be found here.

CERN will be hosting an Open Hardware workshop in Grenoble, France, on 9 October 2011. µ