The Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation aims to clarify the licensing situation for Free and Open Source Silicon (FOSSi) designs. Licensing of FOSSi is similar to that of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), but the process of making a chip and the industry conditions vary a lot. The following assumes the reader is familiar with the basics of open source licensing, please see our introduction as reference.
Similar to FOSS, there is a common source format in FOSSi: Hardware Description Languages (HDL) are a textual representation of a FOSSi design as programming languages are for FOSS software. While there are other source formats too (like schematics), HDL is the most common and we will use this as source format in the following.
Free and Open Source Software licenses are many and varied, well established, well understood and have been tested in multiple major jurisdictions around the world. Conversely, FOSSi licenses are fraught with uncertainty and have not been tested in a court. Thus far a common approach has been to apply FOSS licenses to FOSSi works, however without clauses which make them apply to HDL designs they are, at best, ill fitting.
The FOSSi Foundation will work towards more certainty in this field by:
- Providing a comprehensive overview of the specialties of FOSSi and where we identify limitations of open source software licenses.
- Presenting three license options as discussed below. Those can be (1) existing licenses, (2) improvements to existing licenses or (3) newly created licenses.
- Seeking approval of the license options by the Open Source Initiative (OSI).
Generally, three kinds of licenses are supposed to cover the spectrum of demands by users: permissive, weak copyleft and strong copyleft.
Permissive
For permissive licenses the situation is reasonably straightforward. However, a variant of an existing license with a special wording for FOSSi has a great advantage. But it is important that such licenses are considered, specifically in the context of FOSSi works, and agreed upon and approved for use.
We think that the Solderpad hardware license (SHL) is a good permissive license and want to contribute to its wording where necessary. Once suitably amended, we will recommend it for use and seek OSI approval.
Copyleft
There are good reasons for both strong and weak copyleft licenses, however to date licenses like the GNU GPL and LGPL have been recommended to achieve these licensing goals for HDL designs. For software works, the boundaries of the work — what sources are required to be distributed and conditions upon which license obligations are triggered, such as when a design is distributed — are clear; with FOSSi works this is much less clear.
What the FOSSi Foundation would like to see is a consensus on the boundaries of FOSSi works, what constitutes distribution and what is required to be published, as these are crucial to implementing practical strong and weak copyleft licenses.
Strong Copyleft
The implication of a strong copyleft license is to require the user of a work under such a license to release/convey the combined work (ie. the rest of the code) under the same or a compatible copyleft license. Usually the reasons for their use are:
- To increase the number of free and open source works available, so requiring the entire derivative work and its constituent works to be open-sourced if they are not already, thereby adding to the pool of existing open source works.
- For commercial gain by offering a work on a dual license scheme; a zero-cost version which is open source and copyleft (usually for evaluation, academia), and another with a non-zero cost and a proprietary license. The proprietary license version is purchased to eliminate any copyleft obligations on the end product in the case that the derivative (combined) work cannot be open-sourced because it contains other proprietary IP the developer does not have the right to release.
For strong copyleft, GPL is the most popular license in the software world. However, if used as-is it requires interpretation of what it's strongly software-oriented terminology means in the semiconductor design domain. For instance, the GPL requires the conveying of “corresponding source”, which in the digital design realm would include highly commercially sensitive data such as technology libraries and physical implementation information. A way around requirements such as these is essential. However, using the “additional terms-mechanism” of the GNU GPL is seen as a way forward here to be applied to the GPL for it to be appropriate for use with digital designs. Another path is improving the CERN Open Hardware License (OHL) for FOSSi.
Weak Copyleft
Weak copyleft licenses apply the requirements of the open source license on the work up to a certain point or boundary in a derived work, based on the manner in which it has become a derived work. This is almost always done to allow to use of the copyleft work with others of a different license, without the requirements of the copyleft license applying to those other works.
Developing a weak copyleft license is considered crucial to the success and adoption of FOSSi works within the semiconductor industry, enabling collaboration with commercial developers as they would be able to integrate open source works without fear of exposing other proprietary IP. The most important part of such a license is specifying where the boundary lies between having to comply with the open source terms of the license and not.
There are two approaches to specifying the boundaries of a work: the first is by specifying the way in which the work is derived to ensure the license does not apply beyond its bounds, and the second is by specifying the boundary at the source file level. The LGPL is an example of the former, and the Mozilla Public License (MPL) is an example of the latter.
Logical boundary
The bounds of an individual HDL work are relatively easy to specify when the work is instantiated whole and a standard interface is used to access it. However, issues arise when third-party IP needs to be instantiated within its bounds, such as memories and other standard logic. Further problems arise when IP inserted by build tools, such as complex logic structures inferred from the HDL code, end up in the final derived work. Again, the semiconductor world is full of strongly protected technologies which are inextricably woven into a design at “build” time, and will never be allowed to become subject to an open source license.
A copyleft license for HDL based on the logical scope of the core are possible, and deriving a license similar to LPGL is possibly one approach.
File boundary
The other approach, file-based, is likely to be the simplest, most elegant solution, requiring the creators of a derived work release only the files of the works including their modifications to them. Such an approach can be achieved by modifying existing file-based licenses such as the MPL, with likely minor changes. One example for such a license is the Open Hardware Description License (OHDL).
Summary
As outlined above, activities the FOSSi Foundation Licensing Committee will undertake shall include work towards a permissive and two copyleft licenses (weak and strong). In the case of a permissive license, it likely adapting the Solderpad license is a good way forward. For a strong copyleft, attempting to work through the software concepts for the GPL or CERN OHL will likely yield a robust licenses, and for copyleft, logic-based versus file-based needs to be explored.