Author: alicia

Welcome to the following 2019-2021 board members! Thank you to all OSHWA members who voted, your vote is important – we had quorum! Here are the results:

Become an OSHWA member today to vote on nominees!

This year, we have 4 open seats on the OSHWA board. Board members will hold a 2-year position. Once board members have been chosen by the community, the board will appoint a President, VP, and Secretary. As every nominee answered “Yes” to having 5-10 hours a month to give to the board, we did not include that question in each nominee’s data. Board responsibilities include fundraising, advising on goals and direction, and carrying out compliance of the organization’s purposes and bylaws. The vote will be open on Oct. 16th-18th. Members will be emailed a link to vote.

Here are the nominees in alphabetical order:

Joe McManus

Why do you want to be on the board? I firmly believe in the positive contribution to the world that open source hardware and software has made. Technology advances created by the open source ecosystem aside, the positive impact on society is immeasurable. I would love to add a usable/practical security view to the board.

What qualifies you to be a board member? I work for the open source company Canonical where I am the director of security leading a global team of engineers ensuring that users of Ubuntu are secure. Additionally I have been a senior security researcher at CERT part of the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University for the past 14 years. While there I contributed to open source NetFlow monitoring software which is used to protect over 14% of all internet traffic. For 5 years I was a professor where I ran the graduate security program at CU Boulder. Prior to that I have held positions in industry such as Director of Security, Head of R&D, programmer, sys admin, dba, bike messenger, etc.

Katherine Scott

Why do you want to be on the board? I am currently the developer advocate at Open Robotics. I want to help cultivate the open hardware community for robotics.

What qualifies you to be a board member? I’ve been a board member in the past and attended several conference Open Hardware Summit. I have helped create open hardware and software in the past.

Nadya Peek

Why do you want to be on the board? I believe technology to be a democratic tool. To enable this, I believe in creating reusable, modular, extensible, interoperable, and accessible technologies. Specifically, I believe in creating infrastructural technologies that can serve any (unintended) application. The Internet is a previous example of a successful infrastructure (providing a platform for applications such as the world wide web, email, or VOIP). Crucially, internet standards were open, free, and iteratively created by a community of practitioners. I believe Open Source Hardware can (and sometimes already does) fulfill similar infrastructural needs. Especially with respect to enabling distributed, low-volume, precise manufacturing tools, I believe it is crucial to create, maintain, and improve free and open standards and to prevent walled gardens or silos of technology. More than that, I also believe we need to create recommendations and guidelines for what makes open source hardware reproducible and extensible by other people, which I believe is more than putting some source online in a repo somewhere. Maker culture champions broader-base participation in technology, and I want to work on making sure that participation makes real lasting changes. I would like to serve on the board of the Open Hardware Association as I believe it to be an organization uniquely focused on developing, discussing, and disseminating open standards for technology.

What qualifies you to be a board member? I have been actively developing open source hardware for more than a decade! I’m a professor at the University of Washington where I direct a research group called Machine Agency which is dedicated to developing open-source hardware machines. I was on the board before, including serving as VP, but didn’t run for a year while I moved to the University of Washington. Now I’m all set up with a sweet new lab! I have previously worked on many engineering teams including for aerospace, manufacturing, medical devices, and architectural applications. I have helped set up more than 50 Fablabs and makerspaces throughout the world, giving me ample experience with how many different kinds of people interact with many different kinds of technology. I help organize many conferences, including the Symposium on Computational Fabrication, the annual global Fablab conference, and our very own Open Source Hardware Summit, and am familiar with event planning and fund raising. I am an advisor to the Fab Foundation (a non-profit that globally facilitates fab labs), the Distributed Design Market Platform, a variety of hardware related start ups, and in the Tool Foundry Accelerator. I have spoken about hardware and manufacturing on many occasions including at the White House, Hackaday Supercon, TEDx, HOPE, Teardown, and Chaos Computer Club Congress. I have a PhD from MIT and am in a band called Construction.

Salman Faris

Why do you want to be on the board? After my Graduation I spent most of my time in FoxLab Makerspace as a mentor, mentoring Students across Kerala, I was one among the team that setup FoxLab Makerspace. I’m keenly interested in learning new things and attending technical sessions and developer conference all over Kerala, I became Malayalam Translation manager of DuckDuckGO based on my contribution , hackster ambassador and seeed studio ranger based on my contribution .

Working with some great creative minds in Foxlab I gathered a lot of knowledge in technological advancements and through them I got introduced to digital fabrication. I then heard about Fablab and I joined! Working through the machines in and using the resources available in the lab really helped me improve my skill in digital fabrication. It made me feel that Fablab was the best decision of my life. All the necessary knowledge could be gained from the weekly assignments and through the Fablab network I also got the chance to interact with a lot of talented people across the world. I could also share my creations with the world which could otherwise have never been possible. I felt like the whole world was helping me achieve my target. Everybody in the network was an expert in some field or the other. They guided me a lot and I’m much obliged to them. The feeling of progressing was a great source of motivation for me. I could see myself improve each day I spent in the lab. Fablab is such a great initiative by Prof. Neil.

I believe based on my past experience with the help of OSHWA support and expertise I can Organize conferences and community events and Educate the general public about open source hardware and its socially beneficial uses.

What qualifies you to be a board member? From childhood I was very much interested in electronics and engineering ,I was very passionate about it and curious about it , based on my interest to learn more technology I pursued my graduation in Computer Science , at the time I get to know about arduino , beaglebone and raspberry pi , until then I thought hardware is very hard to learn and also I can’t find any resources to get started and most of the resources are very expensive , after that I enjoyed my programming classes with the physical computing using the arduino and beaglebone . at the same time my colleagues are stuck with the programming theory classes , so then I started to introduce to open hardware and the physical computing and they are really enjoyed and I was successful getting them onboard .

At the time I was getting to know hackster contest , I participated in several of them , at first time noen of the get it but learned more about the hardware ecosystem and its possibilities and that time hackster started a new programme called hackster live ambassador , I applied I got selected as a hackster live ambassador in india , it was my turning point to communities , at the time in kerala (a state in India) most of them focuses on software communities like mozilla , GDG , FOSS ..etc so there is hardware communities , and I realized that I got a great opportunity to enable hardware ecosystem in kerala by this hackster hardware communities , so with friends from colleges we started to conduct offline events and event was sponsored by hackster they will also provide the hardware too . so from that I organized 100+ hardware meetups and workshops across kerala and been part 50+ hackathon as hardware mentor

After my college I joined MIT FabAcademy to pursue the digital fabrication diploma, it’s an academy that teaches to make almost anything , I really enjoyed each of every day in the academy , I also received Fablab kerala scholarship too , part of the academy I designed and completed an open source waste management system (http://archive.fabacademy.org/2018/labs/fablabkochi/students/salman-faris/)

After that I joined kerala startup mission (a Govt entity ) As technology innovation fellow , and my focus into fabrication technologies , as part of the fellowship I got many opportunities to attend many hardware conference like LoRa Conference India , Maker Faire Hyderabad ..etc also as part SeeedStudio (China based H/W service company ) contest I got the chance to be part of MakerFaire Shenzhen , Good for Open hardware Summit by GOSH , Kick started creator meetup , China Industrial tour ..etc and after that I got selected as SeeedStudio Ranger .

As part of the fellowship research I was working on a project called FabScope , Fab μ-Scope is cheap, open source microscope that can easily build from a Fablab, main goal is to give quality health checkup to poor people and societies to get medical attention when it’s needed. http://salmanfarisvp.com/Fab-MicroScope/

This year I was an instructor at fab lab kochi for the Fab Academy 2019 , and it was an awesome experience , after that now I was working on a maker space as Space manager

We makers and hardware enthusiast from kerala create a maker helping platform called makergram.com and I understand that knowledge is of no value unless it is shared and put to practice. I want to keep this pace of my progress and I feel it is my social commitment to inspire a lot of people across the world to make their ideas a reality.For that I would like to join the OSHAWA as Board Member . It would deeply satisfy me by working on open source hardware ducate the general public about open source hardware and its socially beneficial uses.

Link :

Github : https://github.com/salmanfarisvp
Hackster.io : https://www.hackster.io/Salmanfarisvp
Linkedin :: https://linkedin.com/in/salmanfarisvp/
MakerGram : https://community.makergram.com/user/salmanfaris
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/salmanfarisnbr
Twitter : https://twitter.com/0xsalfar
Fab Academy : http://archive.fabacademy.org/2018/labs/fablabkochi/students/salman-faris/

Suhail P

Why do you want to be on the board? As a maker and open source hardware enthusiast, IAM always contributing to open source hardware by building my own projects and make technology more accessible to every person. i would like to support and promote open source hardware in depth by joining OSHWA board member to unleash more paths for that . Bringing more enthusiast to contribute into the the OSHWA community and make sure a good solid future for open source hardware. Iam trying to bring OSH culture in developing nations and rural areas were people lack of awareness about technologies.

What qualifies you to be a board member? Iam a part of major hardware communities in India. Running many open hardware programs and events across India with the help of govt. Also iam the official technology innovation fellow of Kerala startup mission ( a firm to support innovation and entrepreneurship by govt of Kerala) I am the corganizer of makerfest (a Indian version of makerfaire supported by Motvani jadeja found.). Running major online hardware community’s events locally. Spreading and building open source hardware and maker culture is my profession and I suppose to be contribute more in to the community.

OSHWA is looking for 4 new faces to join the board of directors for the Open Source Hardware Association. The nominee form is for self-nominations only. Please fill out the nominee form (deactivated Oct. 11th) to become a nominee or forward the link to someone you want to nominate. Do not fill out the form for someone else. The purpose of this form is to tell voting members why you want to serve on the OSHWA board. We will be publish the nominees and their answers on Oct 13th. Board members hold a 2-year position. Once board members have been chosen by the community, the board will appoint a President, VP, and Secretary. Board responsibilities include fundraising, advising on goals and direction, and carry out compliance with the organizations purposes and bylaws. See the board member agreement to get a sense of the responsibilities. Board members are expected to adhere to the board attendance policy and come prepared having read the board packet. Board members are expected to spend 5-10 hours of time per month on OSHWA. Nominees can submit questions to info@oshwa.org. Nominations will be open until Oct. 11th.

Member voting will take place Oct. 14-16. Want to vote in the election? Become a member! Please note that only individuals can vote, corporate members cannot.

October is Open Hardware Month! Check out the Open Hardware Month website. Host an event, find a local event, or certify your hardware to support Open Source Hardware.

We are providing resources and asking you, the community, to host small, local events in the name of open source hardware. Tell us about your October event by filling out the form below. Your event will be featured on OSHWA’s Open Hardware Month page (provided you have followed OSHWA’s rules listed on the “Do’s and Don’ts” page).

In 2020, we will be celebrating tenth anniversary of the Open Hardware Summit. The 2020 Open Hardware Summit will be held Friday, March 13th, 2020 at Tishman Auditorium – NYU School of Law located at 63 5th Ave, New York, NY 10003, USA.  For more information, please visit: http://2020.oshwa.org/

Welcome to the following 2018-2020 board members! Thank you to all OSHWA members who voted, your vote is important – we had quorum! Here are the results:

Drew Fustini

Drew has a passion for collaborating on Open Source Hardware and Free Software projects.  He is an Open Source Hardware designer and firmware developer at OSH Park.  Drew is also a board member of the BeagleBoard.org Foundation and maintains the BeagleBone Python library for Adafruit.

Michael Weinberg

Michael Weinberg is the Executive Director of the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy at the NYU School of Law. Before joining the Center he served as General Counsel at Shapeways, a 3D printing marketplace and service company, where he also oversaw strategic partnerships and developed new business initiatives. Prior to Shapeways Michael held a number of roles at Public Knowledge, a nonprofit public
interest advocacy organization dedicated to representing consumers and the public interest in technology policy debates in Washington, DC.

Jason Kridner

Jason Kridner is a Founder of the BeagleBoard.org Foundation and a 25 year veteran of Texas Instruments working in embedded systems. The BeagleBoard.org^® Foundation is a US-based 501c3 non-profit existing to provide education in and collaboration around the design and use of open-source software and hardware in embedded computing. Jason leads the development of and maintains open-source development tools such as BeagleBoard^®, -xM, -X15, BeagleBone^®, Black, Blue and the new PocketBeagle^®, a Linux-based open-source USB-key-fob computer. Kridner has been a featured keynote speaker and instructor at many industry and educational events including Maker Faires, American Society of Engineering Education Conference, ELC, Collaboration Summit, Android Builders, OSCON, CES and others.

Shah Selbe

Eric Pan

Jeffrey Warren

The creator of GrassrootsMapping.org and co-founder and Research Director for Public Lab, Jeffrey Warren designs mapping and community science tools and professionally flies balloons and kites. Notable software he has created include the vector-mapping framework Cartagen and orthorectification tool MapKnitter, as well as open spectral database and toolkit Spectral Workbench.

He is on the board (since 2014) of alternative education program Parts and Crafts in Somerville MA, and an advocate of open source software, hardware, and data. He co-founded Vestal Design, a graphic/interaction design firm in 2004, and directed the Cut&Paste Labs project, a year-long series of workshops on open source tools and web design in 2006-7 with Lima designer Diego Rotalde.

Jeff holds an MS from MIT and a BA in Architecture from Yale University, and spent much of that time working with artist/technologist Natalie Jeremijenko, building robotic dogs and stuff. To find out more, visit Unterbahn.com

Photo by ChristopherVillafuerte.com CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Become an OSHWA member today to vote on nominees!

This year, we have 6 open seats on the OSHWA board. Board members will hold a 2-year position. Once board members have been chosen by the community, the board will appoint a President, VP, and Secretary. As every nominee answered “Yes” to having 5-10 hours a month to give to the board, we did not include that question in each nominee’s data. Board responsibilities include fundraising, advising on goals and direction, and carrying out compliance of the organization’s purposes and bylaws. The vote will be open on Nov. 8th-12th. Members will be emailed a link to vote.

Here are the nominees in alphabetical order:

Tom Callaway

Why do you want to be on the board?
To continue to support the open source hardware community, and to bring my expertise in open source community management to the OSH community.

What qualifies you to be a board member?
I have been at Red Hat since 2001, and was responsible for Red Hat’s adoption of open source hardware in its 3d printing labs. I feel that the experiences that I have had working with the Open Source software community over the last 15 years will transfer well to the challenges faced by the Open Source Hardware Community. I’ve worked to ensure that Red Hat remains a visible contributor to the Open Source Hardware community (despite producing no hardware of its own), as well as incorporating Open Source Hardware opportunities in my education outreach efforts (e.g. funding work with CU Boulder’s BTU lab)

Drew Fustini

Why do you want to be on the board?
I want to help grow the Open Source Hardware movement through outreach and advocacy to communities that are as familiar with the open source hardware philosophy and the potential benefits.

What qualifies you to be a board member?
The OSHW philosophy and community is very important and special to me.
I am a founding member of OSHWA and have attended the Open Hardware Summit since the first year. I want to take a more active role and help grow this community and increase it’s usefulness.

Harris Kenny

Why do you want to be on the board?
I have had the privilege of being on the OSHWA Board for a single two-year term. During this time, I served as Treasurer for two years and contributed to or advised the certification of 26 projects (most recently, a desktop computer line and associated IO boards.) I’ve also helped with OH Summit. If re-elected for a second term, my goal would be to build on this work.

I want to hand off my knowledge of being treasurer to a new successor and improve how we grow OSHWA financially. I also want to identify ways to improve the certification process and documentation to support new categories of products and projects becoming open source hardware. I see certification as instrumental to growing the social and technical impact of open source hardware in art, research, education, and industry.

What qualifies you to be a board member?
I have served on the OSHWA Board for the last two years as Treasurer and spoke at OH Summit 2016 in Portland. During the day, I am the Director of Business Development for System76, maker of Linux laptops, desktops, and servers. I coordinated the certification of the company’s new flagship desktop: Thelio. I previously served as President of Aleph Objects (maker of LulzBot 3D printers) and worked there for five years. I also earned an MBA from the University of Denver.

I believe deeply in the importance of freely licensing art and technology and ensuring that doing so is sustainable for creators. In my personal time, I contribute to public data projects like Wikipedia and Open Street Map and run Linux at home. Overall, I bring my business background to OSHWA along with with my passion for the values of the free software and open source hardware communities.

Jason Kridner

Why do you want to be on the board?
Open hardware matters as a means to improve technology accessibility, aide education, and foster general freedoms, including the right-to-repair and the right-to-know. OSHWA has assembled an amazing community and I feel obligated to help achieve our common goals, especially the one saying we desire to “Educate the general public about open source hardware and its socially beneficial uses.” Who doesn’t want to make the world a better place? This is an area where I feel I can help.

What qualifies you to be a board member?
My focus has been on open hardware since 2008 and I’ve built a successful open hardware brand in BeagleBoard.org, which continues to grow in terms of volume and participation. I’m acquainted with the leaders in the community having begun my foray into open hardware in 2008 and having been a speaker at several of the previous Open Hardware Summit events. I’ve demonstrated to leaders in the open hardware movement that my intentions go beyond any one sub-community to the goals of the community at large. My skills in interacting with these other leaders, gathering output from volunteers and driving consensus in diverse settings should be valuable to the board, organization and community.

Akshai M

Why do you want to be on the board?
I shall convince the team to promote Freedom in Open Source Hardware Projects. We need the concept of freedom embedded into the very fabric of Open Source Hardware. I will work with the team to bring a long term ( 3 Year) roadmap to promote Open Source Hardware and its adoption in devoloping nations and shall strive to align my goals with UN Sustainable Development Goals for the greater benefit of the world.

What qualifies you to be a board member?
Currently working with the Government of Kerala, India, to enable Open Source Hardware Manufacturing in the state and bring about an ecosystem for the development of Open Source Projects on LoRaWAN based IoT Projects. Worked extensively on ExpEYES project and MicroHOPE project. Worked with the Kerala State Government to bring 22 Open Source IoT Labs in the state.

Eric Pan

Why do you want to be on the board?
Help expand the influence of OSHWA to more industries and regions.

What qualifies you to be a board member?
As founder of Seeed Studio, working on open hardware since 2008, participated since the first OHS, well experienced most pains and gains of open hardware. Have solid faith over open hardware and proactively exploring possibilities to support it to the next level.

Rolly Seth

Why do you want to be on the board?
I owe most of the credit of what I have learned in life and where I am today to the open web of knowledge and maker community supporters. I feel it is time for me to share my learnings and give back. As a board member, along with contributing to the OSHW (Open Source Hardware) certification and summit, I would like to promote OSHWA’s mission especially in Pacific Northwest region and explore how global organizations, such as Microsoft can contribute and support. Coming from a technology industry where with each passing day, AI (artificial intelligence) and IoT (Internet of Things) seem to play a more important role to impact society, consumers and communities are looking for more creative hardware solutions, which are easy to connect and secured. As a maker/hardware enthusiast myself, I believe the community will play a critical role in achieving the target of 20+ billion connected devices by 2020 and OSHWA can provide a great platform to activate and engage that community.
Hardware and Software must go hand in hand to develop next generation of devices and services. An active discussion and engagement with community can help understand consumer needs, set the right interoperable, secured standards and frameworks; and support the next wave of DIY manufacturing and personal fabrication.
OSHWA has come a long way since its inception in 2012. Several people across the world now understand and appreciates the value of producing open source hardware (OSH) and know the steps to produce OSH with recent OSH 2.0 certification guidelines. With DIY manufacturing becoming more within reach and edge computing becoming the need of the hour, OSHWA can play a critical role in driving the required next level change.
I believe in the vision and values of Open Source Hardware and want to play an active role in contributing to the next generation of hardware revolution.

What qualifies you to be a board member?
I believe my background, my passion and future pursuits qualify me to be a board member of OSHWA.
a). Background-
An electronics and communication engineer by background coupled with a liberal arts fellowship, I have been fascinated with exploring how technology can be integrated with multi-disciplinary fields to create more seamless and unique experiences.
My team has won several local and international accolades for some of the hardware projects we worked on in the past decade such as viSparsh, a haptic belt for visually impaired -http://visparsh.blogspot.com/ , which was accredited among top 12 Asian Innovation of 2012 by The Wall Street Journal. Other past awards, including Accenture Innovation Jockeys and Singularity University’s Global Impact Competition can be found here- http://rollyseth.com/awards
Inspired by Maker Movement, my friend and I activated the maker community at Microsoft India and opened Microsoft India’s first makerspace in 2015. I contributed to several creative hardware prototypes from humanoid to cloud connected t-shirt to an open source hardware and software solution such as https://github.com/Microsoft/kinect-ripple (Dual projection interactive framework).
I started my career as a Scientist Fellow in Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India and have worked in the government, research and non-profit sectors. My background gives me an understanding and needs of various sectors and have a strong connection with hardware, making and DIY.

b). Current & Future –
I currently lead the Microsoft Garage space, programming and communities in Microsoft HQ – Redmond. Microsoft Garage is Microsoft’s experimentation outlet for employees where we have thousands of makers in the Redmond campus and at major development centers worldwide. My role here involves staying updated with the recent technology and multi-disciplinary trends and explore how we can enable Microsoft makers and hackers to learn by doing and contribute in those areas.
Personally, I am about to finish ‘52 weekends of Making’ challenge https://www.youtube.com/c/RollySeth , which I undertook to expand my thinking of how traditional creative making mediums can integrate with emerging technologies to create more ambient scenarios of the future.
I believe in the power of the collective and my industry & personal experiences provide me with a unique space to contribute to the Open Source Hardware & DIY manufacturing culture.
I look forward to exploring how I can bring my diverse skills to the table as part of OSHWA.

Shah Selbe

Why do you want to be on the board?
I had such a great experience with the people that I met at the Open Hardware Summit and it made me want to be part of the community. I’d like to contribute to bring open hardware into areas that it hasn’t been used before and give back.

What qualifies you to be a board member?
I’ve been a leader in many professional organizations in the past (Engineers Without Borders, Systems Engineering Professional Society, National Geographic Explorers, etc) that I could help with many different tasks. I would love to help fulfill the vision of open hardware and bring the organization to the next level.

Jeffrey Yoo Warren

Why do you want to be on the board?
I’ve involved in many discussions at OSHWA about the open hardware community and open hardware intellectual property and legal matters — most recently in the discussions around an Open Hardware Certification model. I feel that my perspective on open source hardware strikes a balance between the functional argument that open hardware is a better way to create hardware, and the ethical position that we should have the right to examine/copy/modify/distribute designs — that open collaboration is a better model for our society. I believe deeply in community-driven processes, while also believing that for-profit organizations can — and stand to benefit greatly from — being “good open hardware citizens.”

I really believe that if an individual or organization thinks of open sourcing their work as a kind of charity, as opposed to as a way to improve it through rigorous community testing and input, they are missing the point. Working in an open source model is an acknowledgment that we don’t have all the answers, and that, whether we just ‘put it out there’ for people to build on, or actively seek input and collaboration from a broader and more diverse public, we are seeking to incorporate new and better ideas into the work, and are aware of our own limitations as engineers, designers, technologists, and more.

Most of all, I believe strongly that the key to a healthy open source hardware movement is culture. We must continue and improve upon our open, discursive approach to open hardware, and to build strong norms to guide our work, so that we can continue to invent, collaborate, and benefit from one anothers’ work. This spans from good documentation to standards of design file publication, to refining the pace and practices of the actual collaboration in online forums, publication platforms, and even in-person meetings.

Finally, I believe in the power of the perspectives, ideas, and active participation of people who have been excluded (structurally or otherwise) from the growing open hardware community, and feel that we have a responsibility to work towards a more equitable and inclusive community.

What qualifies you to be a board member?
I’ve served on the OSHWA board for 2 years, and have been deeply interested in open hardware both through my work at Public Lab, and as part of the broader free/libre/open source movement. Public Lab, a community of thousands of people engaged in collaboratively developing affordable and accessible environmental testing techniques and equipment, has been using the CERN Open Hardware License for several years, and I participated in the discussions and comment period which led to version 1.2 of that license. I am a producer and consumer of open source hardware and free/libre/open source software, notably as a lead developer of Public Lab’s DIY Spectrometer and associated SpectralWorkbench.org software suite (http://publiclab.org/lego), as well as the Infragram multispectral camera (http://publiclab.org/infragram) and associated Infragram.org image compositing system. Since 2011, using our published designs and kits, over six thousand people have constructed their own spectrometers, and many have contributed back their refinements and additions. The size and scope of this project gives me key insight into how a diverse community of contributors can collaboratively tackle complex hardware design, and into the challenges of scaling such a model.

I’ve also served as the secretary of OSHWA, taking minutes on board meetings, and have missed almost none of the meetings over the years I served — an attendance record I’m proud of. I would be excited to once again represent the interests of community-based open hardware contributors everywhere during an additional two years of service.

Michael Weinberg

Why do you want to be on the board?
While not as important as actual design and creation of OSHW, legal and licensing issues have the potential to have a huge impact on its development and growth. OSS serves as a guide, but not a perfect analogy, for hardware. I want to be on the board of OSHWA to try and help make sure that legal and policy structures are in place to foster OSHW. I also want to make sure that the OSHWA does everything it can to encourage the development of easy to understand best practices that allow non-lawyers to easily navigate some of these thorny issues.

What qualifies you to be a board member?
I’ve been the point person for the OSHWA certification process since 2015 and would like to continue doing so.

OSHWA is looking for 6 new faces to join the board of directors for the Open Source Hardware Association. The nominee form is for self-nominations only. Please fill out the nominee form (deactivated Nov. 4th) to become a nominee or forward the link to someone you want to nominate. Do not fill out the form for someone else. The purpose of this form is to tell voting members why you want to serve on the OSHWA board. We will be publish the nominees and their answers on Nov. 5th. Board members hold a 2-year position. Once board members have been chosen by the community, the board will appoint a President, VP, and Secretary. Board responsibilities include fundraising, advising on goals and direction, and carry out compliance with the organizations purposes and bylaws. See the board member agreement to get a sense of the responsibilities. Board members are expected to adhere to the board attendance policy and come prepared having read the board packet. Board members are expected to spend 5-10 hours of time per month on OSHWA. Nominees can submit questions to info@oshwa.org. Nominations will be open until Nov. 4th.

Member voting will take place Nov. 8-12. Want to vote in the election? Become a member! Please note that only individuals can vote, corporate members cannot.

Open Source Stories invited  Alicia Gibb,  Executive Director of the Open Source Hardware Association to give a keynote presentation at the Red Hat Summit in Boston last week.

Gibb’s talk was entitled ‘The Physical Future of Open Source’. The talk was a primer on Open Source Hardware and the future possibilities of communities working together. In her talk, she said: “The more we band together, the more the world becomes open source. If we dream of an Open source world, the world includes physical products. We need to be thinking more holistically. ”

“For this open source future to happen, combining open software and open hardware, we need help from all communities asking themselves is there an open source alternative out there? when wen working on projects”, said Gibb.

Gibb talked about “atoms vs. bits” and the difference included in source from hardware to software: “Currently the open source hardware community doesn’t include the atomic layer in their source, for example where the copper comes from. When we talk about the source of hardware, we suspend reality a bit to include the important parts of the source to recreate the hardware, but raw materials are not considered something worth listing by the open hardware community at this point.”

She spoke about the future of open source hardware. “With more research, 3D printers could print entire components, or turn into desktop chip fabs – if people can create chips at home, they will share files and the IC industry will need to open source chips to stay relevant, whereas currently almost all ICs are closed.”

OSHWA is grateful for the opportunity to spread the word that open source hardware has a definition, a certification mark, and open hardware options exist in the world.