How can we apply copyleft obligations to hardware? In other words, how can we ensure that the users’ freedoms to use, study, modify and share the design of a piece of hardware are retained? This talk aims to address this question by diving into the core legal mechanism of copyleft. In particular, we will look at the text of the GNU General Public License to understand how copyleft works, then adapt the obligations to the realm of hardware. This will allow us to understand the legal differences between software and hardware, identify limitations of license enforcement, but also untangle the complexity of combining software and hardware under copyleft licenses.
