So, there has been a ton of confusion lately as to what our license means. OpenHornet is publicly licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).

What does this mean to you?

You are free to:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format

Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material

Under the following terms:

Attribution — 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.

NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.

ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

What is commercial use?

Much of the confusion has been on the NonCommercial clause. We recently had an incident where someone was trying to sell unlicensed items in a Facebook group based on our design. I did get in contact with a lawyer who sent the individual a cease-and-desist letter. In this case, no further legal action has been necessary. Intellectual property undefended is lost, and OpenHornet will defend its intellectual property.

Commercial use is defined as any reproduction or purpose that is marketed, promoted or sold and incorporates a financial transaction. It does not necessarily have to result in profit, or intended to be for profit.

The bottom line is, I don’t want to have to spend my time away from design and furthering OpenHornet to deal with this sort of thing. Our plans are and will always be open source under the BY-NC-SA license. But if you want to use them in any way that could potentially be construed as commercial, reach out to us and ask for permission. Send me a detailed description of what you are trying to do, and we can talk about alternative licensing.

But I want to buy/sell XYZ part!

Believe me, I want everyone who wants one to be able to build a simulator. We just don’t want to have individuals attempting to profit from our tens-of-thousands of hours of work on this design. Seeking out a license only protects both OpenHornet and yourself.

We have implemented an OpenHornet Authorized Vendor program. If you would like to manufacture and sell OpenHornet parts to the community, feel free to apply to become a OHAV here!