I’ve always been interested in hardware but I’ve never learned much about it past simple analogue PCBs I made back in when I was in highschool.

I am a software guy though, and specifically an open source software guy. So the name of this paper got my attention: “Towards a Functional Licence for Open Hardware”.

It’s a very interesting read if you’ve never thought in depth about how an open source licence might apply to hardware. If nothing else – it will make you appreciate that it’s not so clear.

Perhaps also like me you’ll wonder if open source as a concept was a bit of a fluke when it comes to knowledge sharing. The sentiment of wanting to share is nearly universal but the specific mechanisms for sharing (and enforcing sharing) are so vastly different for different fields.

It’s a short paper but does take some time to read. Good thing I was invigilating an exam this morning :)