William RickertandClaude Opus 5
fb124206c1
Hardware and docs get CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 - build it, change it, share changes, no commercial products. Firmware has to be GPL-2.0 because it derives from QMK, and the GPL forbids adding a NonCommercial restriction, so that half permits commercial use whether we like it or not. LICENSE.md records both, plus the two honest caveats: NC means this is not open source by the OSI or OSHWA definitions, and NonCommercial is a vague term whose enforcement falls on the copyright holder. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Licensing
This project is under two licences, because it has to be.
| Path | Licence |
|---|---|
hardware/, docs/, README.md |
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 — LICENSES/CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0.txt |
firmware/ |
GPL-2.0-or-later — LICENSES/GPL-2.0.txt |
Documents/ |
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.