A number of people have asked the GNU Project if we would like to branch
out from free software into free hardware designs, and expressed their
interest in working on them. Some people have even suggested a project to
make free chip designs.
To understand this issue clearly, recall that ``free software'' is a
matter of freedom, not price; broadly speaking, it means that users are
free to copy and modify the software. So if we try to apply the same
concept to hardware, ``free hardware'' means hardware that users are free
to copy and modify; a ``free hardware design'' means a design that users
are free to copy, modify, and convert into hardware.
Free software is often available for zero price, since it often costs you
nothing to make your own copy. Thus the tendency to confuse ``free'' with
``gratis''. For hardware, the difference between ``free'' and ``gratis''
is more clear-cut; you can't download hardware through the net, and we
don't have automatic copiers for hardware. (Maybe nanotechnology will
provide that capability.) So you must expect that making fresh a copy of
some hardware will cost you, even if the hardware or design is free. The
parts will cost money, and only a very good friend is likely to make
circuit boards or solder wires and chips for you as a favor.
Because copying hardware is so hard, the question of whether we're allowed
to do it is not vitally important. I see no social imperative for free
hardware designs like the imperative for free software. Freedom to copy
software is an important right because it is easy now--any computer user
can do it. Freedom to copy hardware is not as important, because copying
hardware is hard to do. Present-day chip and board fabrication technology
resembles the printing press. Copying hardware is as difficult as copying
books was in the age of the printing press, or more so. So the ethical
issue of copying hardware is more like the ethical issue of copying books
50 years ago, than like the issue of copying software today.
However, a number of hardware ethusiasts are interested in developing free
hardware designs, either because they have fun designing hardware, or
because they want to customize. If you want to work on this, it is a fine
thing to do. The GNU volunteer coordinators (gvc@gnu.org) can put you in
touch with other people who share this interest. If organizations are
formed for this purpose, the GNU Project will refer interested people to
them.
People often ask about the possibility of using the GNU GPL or some other
kind of copyleft for hardware designs.
Firmware such as programs for programmable logic devices or microcoded
machines are software, and can be copylefted like any other software. For
actual circuits, though, the matter is more complex.
Circuits cannot be copylefted because they cannot be copyrighted.
Definitions of circuits written in HDL (hardware definition languages) can
be copylefted, but the copyleft covers only the expression of the
definition, not the circuit itself. Likewise, a drawing or layout of a
circuit can be copylefted, but this only covers the drawing or layout, not
the circuit itself. What this means is that anyone can legally draw the
same circuit topology in a different-looking way, or write a different HDL
definition which produces the same circuit. Thus, the strength of copyleft
when applied to circuits is limited. However, copylefting HDL definitions
and printed circuit layouts may do some good nonetheless.
It is probably not possible to use patents for this purpose either.
Patents do not work like copyrights, and they are very expensive to obtain.
Whether or not a hardware device's internal design is free, it is
absolutely vital for its interface specifications to be free. We can't
write free software to run the hardware without knowing how to operate it.
(Selling a piece of hardware, and refusing to tell the customer how to use
it, strikes me as unconscionable.) But that is another issue.
Copyright 1999 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire article is
permitted provided this notice is preserved.
Richard Stallman is the founder of the Free
Software Foundation, the author of the GNU General Public License (GPL),
and the
original developer of such notable software as gcc
and Emacs.
