Licensing issues for porting KiCAD libraries into EasyEDA?

Community
1

Hi,

I have been reading:

to try to understand the possible implications of porting KiCAD native libraries into a 3rd party EDA tool.

I have has a look round the forum and have found some topics discussing:

  1. redistributing KiCAD libraries as a complete package;
  2. using KiCAD native libraries to make products using KiCAD and;
  3. about using 3rd party contributed KiCAD libraries to make products using KiCAD;

but I am not clear about what the licensing issues might be if the KiCAD libraries are imported into a 3rd party tool (in this case EasyEDA) where they reside as libraries from which users can select and use schematic symbols and PCB footprints as required in the creation of their schematics and PCBs.

The particular point I am unclear about is that I believe this is not the same case as (1) above because although the libraries would be ported from KiCAD into EasyEDA, they are not being offered via EasyEDA as a packaged set of libraries. They are only accessible from and for use within the tool as part of making a product.

So my questions are:

A) Is this possible under the existing license?

B) If yes, would the following exception:

To the extent that the creation of electronic designs that use ‘Licensed Material’ can be considered to be ‘Adapted Material’, then the copyright holder waives article 3 of the license with respect to these designs and any generated files which use data provided as part of the ‘Licensed Material’.

still apply under these circumstances?

Many thanks for your time.

2

Disclaimer: This is not legal advice. You need to consult a lawyer.

Please note the last paragraph

Any distribution of the library components as components for reuse does not have exceptions to the CC-BY-SA. So if EasyEDA would like to utilize the components, then they need to publish the resulting collection under the same license and cannot impose additional restrictions on the work.

3

I am also not a lawyer.

KiCad parts can be shared under the terms of the licence as long as the original licence is kept and the original authors are still credited. (CC-BY-SA 4.0)
The exception is there such that users of assets can then publish their stuff under any licence they want. (So if you want to be on the save side simply assume the exception does not apply to you and use the full creative commons licence for redistribution.)

4

@Seth_h, @Rene_Poschl,

Thanks for your comments.

5

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