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Proposal: Adoption of CERN Open Hardware License
First off, incredible work. The level of detail here, from the ESP32 canard stabilization to the full BOM, is a massive contribution to the open-source aerospace community.
I noticed the repo doesn't have a license yet. By default, that means "All Rights Reserved," which makes it tricky for others to safely build on or contribute to your work. Given that this project involves kinetic energy and propellants, I’d love for you to consider the **CERN Open Hardware Licence (v2)**.
It’s basically "legal armor" designed specifically for physical hardware. Here’s why it’s a better fit than a standard software license:
- The "Rocketry" Shield: Standard licenses (like MIT) are built for code. CERN-OHL has much stronger Liability and Warranty disclaimers tailored for physical objects. This protects you if someone’s build doesn’t go as planned.
- No Patent Trolling: It includes a "patent peace" clause. If someone uses your design, they can’t turn around and sue you for patent infringement based on that same work.
- Legal Clarity: It defines things like "CAD files" and "Physical Products," which software licenses don't really understand.
Two flavors to consider:
1. [CERN-OHL-P (Permissive)](https://opensource.org/license/CERN-OHL-P-2.0): Like MIT. Anyone can do anything with it, including making closed-source commercial versions.
2. [CERN-OHL-W (Weakly Reciprocal)](https://opensource.org/license/CERN-OHL-W-2.0): The "Community Favorite." Anyone can use it in a bigger project, but if ...
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Developer & User Discourse
qmastery16 • Mar 21, 2026
@gmaynez How about about GPLv3 , that any derivative work is forced to be opensourced, so that proprietary entities can't parasite on open source like it happens with MIT etc.?
gmaynez • Mar 21, 2026
> @gmaynez How about about GPLv3 , that any derivative work is forced to be opensourced, so that proprietary entities can't parasite on open source like it happens with MIT etc.?
Not very applicable for hardware... The equivalent of GPL would be CERN-OHL-S (strongly reciprocal).
The equivalent of MPL is CERN-OHL-W (weakly reciprocal), and the equivalent for MIT/Apache is CERN-OHL-P (permissive).
What many people ignore about strong reciprocal/copyleft licenses is that they can "bite you back", as once you accept contributions the project gets locked to that license, preventing even you as original author to monetize or adapt it to your licensing needs. Therefore, they should only be used when you want to become a community (owned) project, like Blender.
Unfortunately, many chose to "desecrate" strong copyleft licenses into business source licenses by forcing contributors to sign a contributor license agreement (CLA) that enables the original copyright holder to do with your code as...
Not very applicable for hardware... The equivalent of GPL would be CERN-OHL-S (strongly reciprocal).
The equivalent of MPL is CERN-OHL-W (weakly reciprocal), and the equivalent for MIT/Apache is CERN-OHL-P (permissive).
What many people ignore about strong reciprocal/copyleft licenses is that they can "bite you back", as once you accept contributions the project gets locked to that license, preventing even you as original author to monetize or adapt it to your licensing needs. Therefore, they should only be used when you want to become a community (owned) project, like Blender.
Unfortunately, many chose to "desecrate" strong copyleft licenses into business source licenses by forcing contributors to sign a contributor license agreement (CLA) that enables the original copyright holder to do with your code as...