Beerware is the Old Open Source Hardware

• by Nate
• July 10, 2009

• Projects

SparkFun discusses open source hardware and goes down an hardware memory lane. Checkout our spin on open and what projects are currently available for download.

It was great to get picked up by Lady Ada, Hack-A-Day, Make (who's Nathan Sheidle?) for open sourcing our ClockIt kit. Thank you very much Make/Lady Ada/Hack-A-Day! Traffic is good. Here's some background on what's going on in the background.

Over burgers at Luger Steak House (amazing!) with my girlfriend, Limor, and PT, we discussed open source hardware - doesn't everyone? PT asked me if SparkFun was up for 'open sourcing' some of our products. I was confused because I thought we had been for awhile...

Flashback to 2004:

The old Serial ADXL board. SparkFun: Messing up designs through open source since '04.

The ADXL serial board tutorial was really the start of SparkFun open-ness. Back then, we didn't know it was called open source hardware. There were a few motives for disclosing the firmware and schematic for this now-retired product:

• 
  I messed up the design and figured other people could learn from my mistakes.
• I wasn't sure the firmware was written all that well, so by disclosing it, I felt that people could see what an amateur I was and possibly make it better.

So frankly, we weren't being altruistic, we were trying to avoid having people mad at us for being poor engineers. Flash forward 5 years and we've learned a few more lessons about how to design better PCBs, but we continue to want to share.

We've been periodically posting engineering files, schematics, and firmware for some of our designs for an awfully long time. Not to mention the eagle footprints for a lot of the stuff we design around. Do a product search for 'eagle' to see the products with eagle files posted. I don't really push the fact that we're posting these files (do these constitute open source hardware?). We often forget to post the eagle files so if there's a board that you want to get the eagle files for, email us (spark at sparkfun com) and we should be able to get it posted.

Here are the potential reasons someone may post an 'Open Source Hardware' project:

1. It's totally cool, and they want to share the project with the world, so that the world can benefit from it.
2. Open Source is the new 'Zigbee' - sort of an empty buzz word in my opinion
3. The design is possibly screwed up, so here's the source so you can't be too mad at us.
4. There's no secret sauce inside, so here's the source.
5. Here's the source cause we stole it from someone else.

You see, SparkFun is a part of all of these. We think what we do is cool, we love bandwagons, there's possibly errors on the layout, it's not all that original, and really, it's not all that original. But hey, if we can be the launching pad for you and your project, please feel free to use our stuff.

Here's the deal: all our boards are released (or should be - let us know if we forgot to mark the files) under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike v3.0 license. Why this license? It's horrible, but it's the best I can find.

Actually, I'd rather have a beerware license on stuff:

I used the beerware license on the ADXL project listed above back in 2004, and I swear, I've actually had a beer purchased for me! (Thanks Stephen!) You say, just one beer? I say it was possibly the best beer I've ever had.

Why not disallow commerical use in our CC license? Well, this sort of goes against what we're trying to accomplish here at SparkFun. You are welcome to take our stuff, make it better, and sell it like crazy. We hope you make ten million theoretical dollars. But you have to maintain attribution (stick our name on there somewhere). And you have to realize we can take your improvements and then come out with an ever better revision of our own. It's awesome the power of open source. Everyone should have the opportunity to make money, and the customer should always get a better product. If we limited the license to non-commercial use, it really hinders the entire process.

Let's say you use one of SparkFun eagle files, modify it, and create a new product. The license says you have to give 'attribution' What should attribution look like?

Here is a great example. Seeedstudio took our FIO board and 'remixed' it and is selling it. This is completely within the bounds of the license, and because they maintained attribution (they kept Shigeru's and my name on the silk and on the eagle files), they are cool in my book. Engineers may be socially awkward, but we still enjoy credit where credit is due. And in the case of SeeedStudio, they made some good improvements that we have incorporated back into new revisions of the FIO. Ahh the circle of life continues.

We do what will let us sleep well at night - we hope you do the same. If you use our eagle files, please maintain the license, give us a link back, a hat tip, a beer, etc.
 
And for your general open enjoyment, here is a short list of projects in which the eagle files are included (and have been for some time):