This post originally appeared on the OSHWA blog.

This post originally appeared on the Shapeways blog.

This post originally appeared on the Shapeways blog.

This post originally appeared on the Shapeways blog.

Open source hardware traces its roots directly back to the open source software community. Despite these roots, hardware is very different from software.  As a result, while some of the norms of open source software port easily to the world of hardware, some are an imperfect fit.  One of the areas of imperfect analogy is in the world of licensing. Fundamentally, this is because open source hardware is not as completely wrapped up in copyright as is open source software.  As a result, open source hardware licenses generally lack one of the two major features of open source software licenses.