Help with understanding the hardware licensing of SparkFun

Community Chit Chat
1

Hello everyone!

I recently bought a breakout board from SparkFun, for the NEO-M8U (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/16329) and I am really happy with the results!

We are working on a product, which is going to involve a NEO-M8U. Now I saw that all of your hardware is licensed under the “Creative Commons Share-alike 4.0 International”, which states that the resulting product (that I am making) must be released under the “Creative Commons Share-alike 4.0 International” license IF it is an adaptation of the original.

My question is, would using the schematic design of your NEO-M8U breakout board (and only altering component placing/layout, without changing function or parts) be seen as a adaptation? Or could I use this, without the need to distribute my product under the “Creative Commons Share-alike 4.0 International” license as well? (My boss won’t allow that, due to business idea restrictions, I personally would love to).

Also, for the attribution part of the license, the License.MD file on GitHub states: " You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use."

Does this mean that giving credit on the product page of our eventual product would be enough (without suggesting that the licensor endorses us or our use), or would you expect it to be in the footer of our whole business’ website or something alike? We would have no problem with mentioning SparkFun and the license on the product page (and/or included in the products’ user guide), but not on every page of the website.

Thanks in advance! :smiley:

With kind regards,

Mats de Waard

2

Thanks for reaching out to us on this.

That is specifically an adaptation of the hardware. Licensing applies, any products produced using adapted versions of our products would need to be released under “Creative Commons Share-alike 4.0 International”

Hope this helps, and happy sparking!

3

Thanks for the quick response!

Okay, that sounds logical. I just wanted a confirmation on this to be 100% sure.

I guess that it will also be seen as an adaptation if we would keep the same PCB layout, and assimilate the SparkFun PCB as-is, in our product? Or would this not be an adaptation? (Thus ruling out the needs to release the product under the “Creative Commons Share-alike 4.0 International” license)

4

Incorporating the product ‘as-is’ would only require the attribution part of the license

“You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.”

Knowing that, now refer back to the earlier info:

Does this mean that giving credit on the product page of our eventual product would be enough (without suggesting that the licensor endorses us or our use), or would you expect it to be in the footer of our whole business’ website or something alike?

Mention relevant licensing on the product page and any tutorials or guides, the product’s read.me, etc…anywhere the product exists, licensing attribution applies. You would not need to mention it anywhere the product does not exist (home page of website, etc.)

Best of luck!

5

Thank you for this clear explanation!

With kind regards,

Mats de Waard