According to FSF's Founder Richard Stallman:
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1-"Free software is often available for zero price, since it often costs you nothing to make your own copy. 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. 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."
2-"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."
3-"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."
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Source:
http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=1999-06-22-005-05-NW-LF
Richard Stallman -- On "Free Hardware"
Jun 22, 1999, 04 :27 UTC
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