Open-Hardware.org is an independent guide to open-source hardware. We write for people who design boards, devices and instruments and want to share them properly: makers releasing a first project, small companies deciding whether to publish their designs, and researchers who need others to reuse their equipment.
The site has three parts. The license chooser on the homepage suggests a license from a few questions. The guides explain the definition, publishing, certification, licensing, business models and history. The license comparison collects the main licenses with links to their official texts.
What we are not
We aren't a certification body, a standards organization or a law firm, and we don't speak for any of them. We don't certify products and we don't issue logos. When we describe a program run by someone else, such as the Open Source Hardware Association's certification, we link to the official source and say so clearly. Nothing on the site is legal advice.
How we write
The guides are written and maintained by the Open-Hardware.org Team. We check facts against primary sources: license texts, official program pages and the organizations' own histories. Where dates or details are disputed, we say that instead of picking one. When something changes, such as a new license version, we update the guide and its date.
We don't take payment for coverage, we don't use affiliate links and we don't run ads. If you spot a mistake, please tell us through the contact page. Corrections are the most useful mail we get.
History of this domain
The domain open-hardware.org has had several owners since the late 1990s. This site was relaunched in 2026 under new, independent management and has no connection to earlier owners of the domain or to anything they published. Older pages were not carried over. Where an old address had an obvious modern counterpart, it now forwards to the closest page here.