The assignment for this week was to look into copyright licences, so I chose the MIT one and the WTFPL, from the list in wikipedia Comparison of software Licenses. MIT has the air of professionality, so using the MIT license does lend the credibility of the MIT into the work, even if it doesnt provide any serious cover. This is something one would expect to see in work done by someone who is serious about their expertise.

The MIT License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Copyright 2017 MIT

The more.. liberal of the two. But in th end also more realistic, because the practicalities of life and internet are such that it is next to impossible to monitor copyrights without a massive lawyer army. This one is pretty much giving the finger to all those obsessed with having all their bases covered with extensive walls of legal engineering jargon.

WTFPL

DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE

Version 2, December 2004

Copyright (C) 2004 Sam Hocevar

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim or modified copies of this license document, and changing it is allowed as long as the name is changed.

DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

0. You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO.

Of these two the MIT one does provide more legal engineering, so for the purposes of this assignment is more viable option. Altough it does need a couple minor tweaks, then again the assesment does say "Create and document a license".

So I chose to make following change, to switch the word "software" for "project". As it extends the legal ambiguity to cover the possible produced hardware instead of just the code associated with it.

Since legal engineering is one of my own terms I feel that I should explain it. In essence, it means people engineer the laws to fit their needs. Instead of fixing the potentially even fatal flaws in their products, just because it is more cost effective to get a law passed.

Copyright 2017 MIKKO TOIVONEN

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this project and associated files (the "Project"), to deal in the Project without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Project, and to permit persons to whom the Project is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Project.

THE PROJECT IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE PROJECT OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE PROJECT.

The possible business opportunities for my final project are limited, there already are plenty of professional multimeters available, not to mention good number of DIY sets as well. So I figure the biggest advantage this has, is in its simplicity. It only has couple more exotic chips, everything else is basic giblets that almost anyone with such components can pull from their own stock.

In the end to have any commercial future this project could be sold as a "make it yourself" kit, and provide all the parts along with the ready milled board to ensure one has even the more exotic chips. Other than that, there is no real point to commercializing the product.

In the end one of the more important things for commerlization of any product is the why the product was made? Was it made to milk money from sheeple? Was it made to look like a rebel? Was it made to pass a course? It is the answer to this question that dictates the commercial value of the item.