Files
William RickertandClaude Opus 5 519c3a22e4 Fix paths after the docs/Documents merge
Every image and link pointed at docs/, which no longer exists - the README
rendered with six broken images. Repoints them at Documents/, updates the
board table to the real Schematics/Left|Right|Numpad tree, and renames
firmware/ to Firmware/ to match the capitalised convention.

Documents/README.md now describes the whole folder rather than just the
datasheets, since the diagrams and BOM live there too.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-28 08:26:38 -05:00

2.0 KiB

Licensing

This project is under two licences, because it has to be.

Path Licence
Schematics/, Documents/, README.md CC BY-NC-SA 4.0LICENSES/CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0.txt
Firmware/ GPL-2.0-or-laterLICENSES/GPL-2.0.txt
Documents/*.PDF Third-party vendor datasheets. Not mine to license.

The hardware: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Build one, change it, share what you change — but don't sell it.

  • BY — credit the original.
  • NC — no commercial use.
  • SA — derivatives must carry this same licence.

Two things to be clear about

This is not "open source" or "open hardware" by the formal definitions. Both the OSI and OSHWA definitions require permitting commercial use, so a NonCommercial term disqualifies it. That is a deliberate choice here, not an oversight — but it means OSHWA will not certify it, some people will decline to contribute on principle, and it cannot be called open source without being wrong.

"NonCommercial" is genuinely fuzzy. Creative Commons defines it as use "not primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or monetary compensation." That leaves real ambiguity: a fab house charging to make you a board is fine, a company using it internally is arguable, someone selling assembled units is not. Enforcement is on the copyright holder.

The firmware: GPL-2.0, and it cannot be otherwise

Anything derived from QMK is GPL-2.0, and the GPL explicitly permits commercial use. A NonCommercial restriction cannot be added to GPL-derived code — doing so would violate the GPL and make the result undistributable.

So the firmware in this repo is GPL-2.0-or-later. Someone may legally sell firmware derived from it. That is not a gap in the licensing; it is the price of building on QMK, and there is no version of this project where it isn't true.

The hardware restriction still stands on its own: the thing you would need to build and sell is the board, and that is NC.