Is it possible to get the reference electrical designs moved to an open license?

I sat down this last weekend to take on a project of making a custom bristlemouth mote in KiCAD that uses standard 2.54mm pin headers instead of a mezzanine connector. This was something that came up at the last Bristlecon and I thought I could take a crack at it.

But when I pulled up the reference design files under the “Bristlemouth Open Standards” Documentaiton page, they are all licensed creative commons No-Derivatives. First off, this means they aren’t open because allowing derivatives is a crucial part of open source, even from the OSHWA. And a no-deriviates license means I can’t use the reference design files to create anything and then share it back with the community. I can only ever use the reference design files as-is or keep whatever I use private. Which feels completely against what I would have thought the goals of having the reference designs would be. Unless there is some angle I am not understanding here.

Would it be possible to get the reference electrical designs re-licensed under an open license like CERN OHL 2.0 (which has the trademark exemption built in), or CC-BY?

Hi there @Jonathan

Thanks for this question – it does sound like we should update this to be more in line with the intent. We’ve got some folks out of town this week so thanks in advance for your patience in a response.

Z