OSHW and product documentation

[wayneft]

I have a questions in regards to selling OSHW (which I would prefer to do) and product documentation. I have no problems publishing schematics and board files for distribution but I would also like to publish a datasheet/users manual with each product and would prefer to have that copyrighted and not available for redistribution. I read over the OSHW definition and did not see any mention of this situation. Could someone expand on this and let me know if this would be OK? Thanks.

[adafruit]

I have a questions in regards to selling OSHW (which I would prefer to do) and product documentation. I have no problems publishing schematics and board files for distribution but I would also like to publish a datasheet/users manual with each product and would prefer to have that copyrighted and not available for redistribution. I read over the OSHW definition and did not see any mention of this situation. Could someone expand on this and let me know if this would be OK? Thanks.

by default any datasheet and user manual is copyrighted (USA) - we have our own photos here and our own text for our products. we ask other makers to make their own text and photos, but we make sure we provide everything needed to use and make the hardware under the same license as the hardware, or close to. in other words - imagine if you were gone tomorrow, your site is down, can people still make, sell and re-create the hardware? if so, you're likely fine, if not - you might want to provide something so that's possible.

if you post specific examples we can check it out as well, it's a little hard to speculate what may or may not be on a datasheet or manual which may be needed to re-create the hardware.

please consider posting this in the OSHW forums as well.

cheers,
adafruit

[wayneft]

Thanks. I just reposted the question over in that forum. I can't really point to any examples as I have not put anything together yet.