It’s logical that people who create such models want some kind of attribution for the effort they put into it. It’s easy to see this as a nuisance when you want to use such parts in your own (open source / hardware) project, but creating all the 3D models yourself would be Much more work.
Any project should have some sort of license or copyright statement. Quite a lot of people find this nonsense, and as a result their published work defaults to an “all rights prohibited” (probably depends on where you live) and this is probably the exact opposite of what they intended. Such people often also are blind to such arguments, and it’s no use to attempt to talk to them. It’s a big messy mudball we live on.
If you include such a license statement in your project, it’s not too much work to keep track of your sources, and put the names of the 3D models you found, combined with their source into the same text file as your license statement. I also guess that a “best effort” is good enough. If you miss to give attribution to some of the 3D models (for example lost the source yourself) then it is extremelly unlikely you will be dragged to court for it. It’s also extremely unlikely you will ever hear back from the source. The worst I can imagine that might happen is to get something like a “cease and desist” letter, and then it’s probably enough to just remove that single 3D model from your project or find a replacement for it.
KiCad has a page on their website considering licensing:
A while back (KiCad V5 to V6) all icons in KiCad were re-designed. Part of the reason was to avoid any problems around licensing of the artwork in those icons. I still find myself longing back to some of the old icons. They were designed very artfully and colorful and this made them easy to memorize and recognize. There is an extremely long thread about those icons on this user forum.
Why are you unsure about this? For me it’s simple. As soon as you make your work available to others and it includes data from grabcad, then the license applies. Even if you just put your project on a publicly accessible space such as gitlab. I guess that “legally” even making a screenshot of a 3D model would make it a “derived work”.
No, don’t exclude the models. do it the other way. Write that your own work is part of whatever license you want to put on it. but you can’t change the license of work done by others willy-nilly. So instead, just list your sources to give attribution to them, and maybe put in a statement that those parts have their own license, which is the default anyway.
KiCad’s own libraries have roots in many sources. The KLC has a separate statement for 3D models.
KiCad is also becoming more popular and widespread, and manufacturers are also becoming aware of this. Some time ago there was a thread about a connector manufacturer (It may have been Wurth / Wuerth (is that the same?)). They had interest to make their whole assortment compatible with KiCad. Probably including footprints and 3D models. But I mostly answer forum questions and did not go into details of such cooperation. But you can rely on KiCad’s library license statements. If a problem ever arises, and your own behavior was in line with that license, then problems around it will probably on KiCad’s neck, and not yours.
Edit: Muy confusion, the wurth thread was about 3D models for inductors
but I’m not a lawyer, and all this may be nonsense or fantasy.
There, I’ve covered myself.
