We're doing this Open Source for several reasons. Main ones are these:
- We want to spend our time on building bikes, not patents.
- We want to help spread the use of cargo bikes. The world needs transportation alternatives and we really don't have the time for too much protectionism. If anyone wants to build their own bikes based on our designs, they are welcome.
- Lastly: even if we did want to, we doubt that we would be able to efficiently patent the bikes. The construction methods we're using are aimed at DIY work, and would not be suitable for industrial production. Therefore, from a commercial angle, it wouldn't make much sense to try and patent them. What's left is some of the general concepts, but these are as you can see here, all tried and tested and we are not at all the first to use them.
Therefore we're publishing our designs under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. This means that:
So, if you want to republish, reproduce or remix what you find here, just remember that you have to attribute it to OpenBikeWorks and N55 (as detailed on the homepage), and that you must distribute it under a similar license.
We wouldn't really mind commercial use of our ideas, but the project is based on work by N55 which is licensed as above. If you would like to utilize parts of the design commercially, please contact us to find out if it's possible. As an example the hub-design and general layout will be our own design.
In general we'd like to be kept up to date on any use of our work. It would make us happy.
