Hacker News Reader

CC-BY-SA 4.0 is an interesting choice. I know this isn't a ShowHN, but was this chosen because it's copyleft, but hardware?

View on HN

The hardware+software used to both be under that same non commercial cc license, but there was recently a relicense of the software to GPL3. I think the goal is to just prevent someone else from profiting off of Clemens's work without him (while still allowing community use).

The GPLv3 does allow profiting off his work though, so that might not be the best choice of license. Especially since hardware vendors often deliberately don't comply with the GPL, and the only recourse is an expensive lawsuit.

> "hardware vendors often deliberately don't comply with the GPL, and the only recourse is an expensive lawsuit."

Isn't that unrelated to exact license choice, and going to be the case with any software that's wants to be open source but not allow commercial use?

There's no license or wording in a license that can change the fact that, if you let people get the source for non-commercial use, there's nothing except the threat of lawsuits to stop anyone from ignoring the license and using it commercially.

Thats going to be the case with almost any license, people even violate the MIT/BSD licenses. One possible exception is CC0, since it has no conditions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com