The CERN Open Hardware Licence (OHL or CERN OHL) is an open-source hardwarelicence[a] created by CERN. The licence comes in three variants: strongly reciprocal[b] (CERN-OHL-S), weakly reciprocal (CERN-OHL-W), and permissive (CERN-OHL-P).
Historyedit
The CERN OHL licence was created as an initiative of the members of the Open Hardware Repository, a knowledge-exchange project of electronics designers working in experimental-physics laboratories, founded by CERN engineers, to regulate the use of the designs published by CERN.[2][3]
Version 1edit
Version 1.0 was published in March 2011. Following community feedback, Version 1.1 was published in July 2011 to follow the generally accepted principles of the free and open-source movements and make it easier for use by entities other than CERN.[3][4]
Version 1.2, published in September 2013, removed the obligation for licensees that modified a CERN OHL-licensed design to notify upstream licensors about the changes and introduced a notion of "Documentation Location" to guarantee hardware recipients access to the design documents. The license's text ceased to single out Intergovernmental Organizations such as CERN, making them the same as any other licensor or licensee.[5][6]
Version 2edit
Version 2.0, published in March 2020, simplified the licence's terminology and divided it into three variants: strongly reciprocal (CERN-OHL-S), weakly reciprocal (CERN-OHL-W), and permissive (CERN-OHL-P). The license's range was broadened to include artistic, mechanical, and electronic designs, as well as adapting it to cases such as application-specific integrated circuits, field-programmable gate arrays, and even software.[7][8]
^Contrary to most licence names, the CERN OHL uses the British English spelling licence rather than the American English spelling license which contains an "s".
^CERN OHL authors prefer to use the term "reciprocal" instead of "copyleft" because the underlying rights are not limited to copyright.[1]
Referencesedit
^"Faq · Wiki · Projects / CERN Open Hardware Licence". Open Hardware Repository. 2023-08-03. Retrieved 2023-12-28.
^"Hardware joins the open movement". CERN Courier. 2011-06-06. Retrieved 2023-12-28.
^ ab"Open hardware for open science". CERN Document Server. Retrieved 2023-12-28.