The shift to digital goods has allowed merchants of digital goods to combine the advantages of both selling and renting, leaving purchasers with the disadvantages of both.[^1] A better approach would be to maintain traditional sales and renting norms into the world of digital goods. Specifically, merchants should be forced to choose between licensing their goods under an ongoing duty to maintain them or selling the goods outright, removing their obligation to maintain them in the future.

This post originally appeared on the Engelberg Center blog

This post originally appeared in Volume 75 of Make Magazine

This post originally appeared as part of a series on open hardware and key messages for public policy hosted by the Journal of Open Hardware

update May 10, 2021: ml5.js formally announced version 1.0 of the license and code of conduct. You can read the launch post, the license, and the Code of Conduct. While a number of edits were made to the Code of Conduct during the review period, the final version of the licensing structure largely tracks what is described in this post.