I’m uncertain if the GPLv3 [1], or something from Creative Commons [3], like the CC-BY-SA [2] license, would be appropriate for open source hardware. I’ve come across the CERN-OHL-S [4], which appears interesting, but I’ve never encountered it in the wild, so I’m wary of it’s apparent obscurity.

References
  1. Type: Webpage. Title: “GNU General Public License”. Publisher: “GNU Operating System”. Accessed: 2025-09-04T21:29Z. URI: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html.
  2. Type: Webpage. Title: “Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International”. Publisher: “Creative Commons”. Accessed: 2025-09-04T21:30Z. URI: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en.
  3. Type: Webpage. Title: “About CC Licenses”. Publisher: “Creative Commons”. Accessed: 2025-04-09T21:31Z. URI: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/.
  4. Type: Text. Title: “CERN Open Hardware Licence Version 2 - Strongly Reciprocal”. Publisher: “CERN”. Accessed: 2025-04-09T21:33Z. URI: https://gitlab.com/ohwr/project/cernohl/-/wikis/uploads/819d71bea3458f71fba6cf4fb0f2de6b/cern_ohl_s_v2.txt.
  • Daemon Silverstein@calckey.world
    1·
    11 days ago

    @Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works

    As I didn’t see any mentions of it among the other replies, I must mention: WTFPL, or, better yet (for liability matters), WTFNMFPL. While I’ve been using it (the latter one) for software projects, I don’t see why not for OSH as well.

    WTFNMFPL stands for “Do What The (censored) You Want To But It’s Not My Fault Public License” and it’s a fork from WTFPL (“Do What The (censored) You Want Public License”) to solve the WTFPL’s loophole where the developer could be blamed for anything as part of the “do what you want” extremely permissive premise.

    It’s not that much different from other very permissive licenses (such as MIT0, which is practically a non-swearing WTFNMFPL), but it carries the bold and casual language which can bring some personality for otherwise cold and highly-formal Agent Smith-esque projects.

    Sometimes a project isn’t just about the software/hardware but the developer’s unique personality as well. Back in 90s/00s, we used to have projects with Easter eggs (I still have the habit of opening every “About” dialog window from software and apps, then clicking/tapping several times over the logo, expecting something funny to happen), atypical (but purposeful) quirks, some code golfing here and there (devs used to do code golfing so the software could fit a floppy disk, and this is how we ended up having many algorithms that are still used nowadays)…

    And this license kind of brings this spirit due to its taboo-shattering language. The project becomes more friendly and far detached from corporate products. It gets imbued with the tinkering spirit that drives the open source. Well, at least it’s how I perceive it.

    The license in details: https://scancode-licensedb.aboutcode.org/wtfnmfpl-1.0.html