The iMX6 Rex module design licensing

Today, I have read a very interesting post by OLIMEX Ltd – What licensee to choose for Open Source Hardware?;

I completely agree with a lot of things in the article. I especially like this part:

“… there are hundreds of derivative designs based on OLinuXino now made by commercial companies which neither give credits to Olimex (as our licensee require) neither contribute back, not even mention that their design is based on ours.

How do I know this? I know, because some of them are bold enough to send us derivative work made from OLinuXino for quote on manufacturing …

Some even do not do any changes than to replace silkscreen with their company name instead Olimex.

And there are some which ask US to replace our name on the OLinuXino boards with theirs and promise to order XXX pcs if we do so.

So the bottom line is – if you want to give away just do it and do not search anything in return.”

It was not an easy decision to choose the license for our project. The iMX6 Rex was developed for teaching purposes – this also explains why we used Altium. It’s not our intention to earn money from selling the design nor boards. Therefore anyone with an interesting project, do not hesitate to contact us. There is a pretty high chance that we will agree on a free iMX6 Rex module license for your commercial project. Just ask. For personal use, the design is free. I also need to add, that our development baseboard is fully open source – including commercial use, see Development Baseboard license >>

At the moment, we do not need fully open the module design. I am completely aware of, that many people will ignore the license and will copy and reuse the design. Not everyone. When we feel the right time comes up, we can always change our decision and fully open the iMX6 Rex module design. However, it would not be possible to do it the other way round (if we opened it now and later we thought that was not the right decision).

We have already agreed to license the design for free with several people/companies. I was surprised, people will appreciative your work. We offered a free license, but most of them decided to pay royalties, even they don’t have to. Thank you very much.