Can hardware have a license?

Question

I was reading a previously asked question, Can I distribute related software and hardware under the same license?, and then it occurred to me that hardware might have patents.

Does this mean that you can't release hardware under, let's say, a Creative Commons license?

Answer 1

Yes.

Examples include:

• Chumby HDK¹
• The TAPR Open Hardware License¹
• The MIT License²
• Various BSD licenses²
• Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 and Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0²
• GPL²

Note that the last four can also be used for software. None of the examples given are exclusively for hardware, with the exception of the TAPR Open Hardware License.

So you can, in fact, release hardware under a Creative Commons license!

---

^{1 This was given as an example here, though not necessarily endorsed.
2 These were described and compared here.}