Clarification on licensing

Also, is it possible to modify a SnapEDA design file (such as a 3D model) and then do one or more of the following:

a) redistribute it by including it in my projects GitHub repo
a) upload the modified file to SnapEDA
c) upload the modified file to a third party site

All of the above would maintain the CC-BY-SA license

Hi Michael,

Yes! You can absolutely upload your PCB design made using SnapEDA libraries under the terms of your choosing. If you want to upload the libraries *by themselves* then you need to reference SnapEDA as per CC-BY-SA and stick to under 10 SnapEDA library files (or get permission from us to distribute more on a one-off basis).

Same note applies to your second question, even if they were modified. The reason for this is that we created the libraries to help engineers with their PCB designs. So we have a very flexible and open license for using them for the purpose of making a PCB design. This way, commercial users can feel completely comfortable knowing they become a part of their own IP.

However, for sharing individual library files we've created, it would not make sense to store those elsewhere for a couple reasons. First, we often make changes to the CAD files based on new standards, component vendor updates, end of life, and datasheet changes. We *always* communicate these changes to engineers who have downloaded the files. If the engineer downloaded our libraries elsewhere, they would not get those updates and it could cause issues with their designs. And secondly, we'd like to keep this helpful, free resource always sustainable, open, and free for all engineers moving forward.

Could you explain more about why you'd like to redistribute our libraries on Github instead of getting or sharing via SnapEDA? Perhaps we can help to add new features to better facilitate that!

So as I understand your answer, it is possible to share my whole PCB design including design files relicensed under (for example) the GPL or Apache License?

For the second question I was mainly referring to uploading modified design files along with my PCB design to GitHub. It could also make sense to keep modified design files in a separate repo to track my changes to them, but I would understand if this has to be kept private.

Regarding sharing modified design files on a third party site, the use case would mainly be uploading a design file to share with others on a public forum thread when collaborating on a project. It may not make sense to upload it to SnapEDA if it is a very project specific modification.

Yes, you can share the design file (which includes the libraries within in) under the terms of your choice. In terms of a private repo for your libraries, yes that would be a good approach.

For the third, that's totally fine. Just make sure to say "Here is the SnapEDA file, licensed under CC-BY-SA". Even better would be to simply provide a link to SnapEDA so they could get the latest, greatest version of the file, and/or download in other formats (ie. KiCad, Altium, Eagle, etc.) If future people reading that post aren't using the same file format, it would also help them.

We're always open to feedback on our licensing and new features to add. I definitely think there's an opportunity here for us to provide better private tracking and sharing of libraries, so I'll share this feedback with our team! In the meantime, hopefully this was helpful and let us know if we can help with anything else!