Licenses

Introduction

It is recommended for any published work to indicate a license.

Licensing is a delicate problem because there is no common regulation nor practice around the world.

We shall distinguish three area where different licensing scheme apply:

• Software
• Documentation
• Hardware

By default Copyright automatically apply to Software and Documentation in most countries. So, an automatic legal protection apply and is widely recognised without registration.

However, for hardware, there is no such thing as an automatic protection nor unified regulation.

Hardware design may be protected if:

• Part of the hardware work may be considered as an artistic work, by example the shape or aesthetic.
• The design incorporate a patented device

Formal registration of shape or aesthetic exists in some countries in the form of a 'deposited model', which may help to enforce it. These registration doesn't involving any control by the administration are generally relatively low cost. This is notably used for logos.

Software licenses

Software open source licenses exist from 1980 and they have been legally enforced in some countries. This is a known area where choice and requirement is clear. Most used open source software licence are :

• GPL
• x

Hardware license

It shall be noted that patents are only valid in a country if they are validly recorded in that countries, which is only done by large multinational companies. Patent may also expires for many reasons, notably if the holder don't pay the fees. Also, there are a lot of abuse of patent.

There are specific local regulations and notably in the USA, prior art is only recognised is it was published in paper writing, meaning that someone can get a patent for something already published on Internet. Also, any prior publication may invalidate a patent in some countries, while in the USA, a published work can be patented within one year.