Author: alicia

OSHWA is looking for 5 new faces to join the board of directors for the Open Source Hardware Association. Please fill out this form to become a nominee or forward the link to the person you wish to nominate for them to fill out. The purpose of this form will be to tell voting members a bit about yourself. We will be publish the nominees and their answers on Aug. 27th. 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. Current board members will meet with nominees who are present at the Summit during lunch on Sept.6th. Board members Windell Oskay, Danese Cooper, and Addie Wagenknecht will remain on the board. Nominations will be open until Aug. 26th.

Nominee form.

Member voting will take place Sept 6 &7. Want to vote in the election? Become a member if you’re not already! Please note that only individuals can vote, corporate members cannot.

The OSHWA board has appointed AddieWagenknecht and Jimmie Rodgers as the 2013 Open Hardware Summit co-chairs!

Addie Wagenknecht completed a Masters at New York University as a Wasserman Scholar and shortly after held fellowships at Eyebeam Atelier, CultureLab UK and more recently at HyperWerk Institute for Post-Industrial Design as well as Carnegie Mellon University STUDIO for Creative Inquiry. She is currently a Mozilla Open(art) Fellow, an artist at Free Art and Technology Lab a.k.a. F.A.T. Lab as well as co-founder of NORTD labs who created the open source lasercutter Lasersaur. The Lasersaur Project is estimated to have around 1,000 active developers including New York University, Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon University among others. Addie is a professor in robotics and open source computation at the institut für experimentelle architektur hochbau at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Wagenknecht’s research, collaborations and projects are documented in a number of academic papers, books and magazines such as the Economist, Forbes, Popular Mechanics, MIT Technology Review, Gizmodo, Slashdot, Engadget, Heise, ARTnews and Der Standard. She currently splits her time between New York City and Austria (but really just lives on the internet). Through her artistic and scientific practices she hopes to challenge the status quo and create a sense of bittersweet irony (preferably both at once). More information can be found at her website http://placesiveneverbeen.com and lasersaur.com

Jimmie Rodgers has been an open hardware developer since 2009, his most popular hardware project being the LoL Shield for Arduino. He’s been involved in organizing events of nearly every size, and his efforts at these events have led to over 40,000 people learning to solder. He was a founding board member of Artisan’s Asylum (world’s largest hackerspace in both size and membership), where he teaches and makes things full time as well as manages the Electronics and Robotics lab. He recently received an Awesome Foundation grant, with which he will be working on open source laser-cut quilts in the coming months.

To apply for these positions, please include your contact information and prepare two paragraphs:
1.Why you would like to assist OSHWA
2. What is your experience in the area you are applying for
Send those items to info@oshwa.org with the subject line as the position you are applying for.

We will be accepting applications until the positions are filled.

Treasurer – Officer position – approx. 5 hours per month – Volunteer basis until further notice

OSHWA is looking for the officer position of treasurer. In this position, you would be working with Nathan Seidle, who is our stand-in treasurer. Our main needs are working with our accountant on taxes, monitoring accounts and putting together a budget. Excel experience required. This position is currently a volunteer, but could turn into a paid position based on OSHWA’s funding.

Duties:

• Gather and submit documents need for taxes for 2014
• Monitor bank and paypal accounts
• Generate a report of finances each month
• Help Nathan create budget
• Attend quarterly board meetings
• Learn about financial accounting for nonprofit organizations

Publicity chair – approx. 3 hours per month – $50/mo.

OSHWA is looking for a publicity chair to use all forms of media and communication to build, maintain and manage the face of the organization with the membership and the public. The publicity chair will communicate OSHWA’s key messages, establish and maintain goodwill and understanding between the organization and the public. The publicity chair will report to the VP of the OSHWA board, currently the VP is Windell Oskay.

Duties:

• Circulate OSHWA’s video and other press
• Answer requests for press & interviews
• Create blog updates, tweets, and other social media
• Collate media coverage
• Prepare and supervise the production of publicity brochures, handouts, direct mail leaflets, promotional videos, photographs, films and multimedia programs
• Foster community relations through events such as open days and through involvement in community initiatives

International branch chair  – Volunteer  basis until further notice

Due to the popularity OSHWA has received in other countries, there is a need to set up an international infrastructure. The chair’s role would be in developing a plan to include international branches of OSHWA within the existing structure. The chair will need to communicate with other interested branches to create the best outcome for everyone. The chair will need to appoint a committee and lead meetings within that committee. This position will need someone who is self-motivated and can work throughout many time zones. This position though voluntary now, could turn into a paid position based on OSHWA’s funding.

Duties:

• Connect with current interest of international branches
• Develop framework to include branches in OSHWA
• Develop a committee to explore international expansion and relationships for OSHWA

To apply for these positions, please include your contact information and prepare two paragraphs:
1.Why you would like to assist OSHWA
2. What is your experience in the area you are applying for
Send those items to info@oshwa.org with the subject line as the position you are applying for.

We will be accepting applications until the positions are filled.

Sign up for membership as an individual or a corporation on our membership page!

Through a member vote 20 to 1 the amendments to the bylaws passed, which included a corporate class of membership. The amendment also contained language that needed to be changed from New York standards to Delaware standards since we started incorporating in one place and ended in the other. Meeting notes from the member meeting on Jan. 10th are located under the file cabinet tab. Thank you to all members who participated.

Sign up for membership as an individual or a corporation on our membership page!

If you are a business that signed up early when we only had one class of membership and would like to change to the corporate class, please email info@oshwa.org

0. File 2012 taxes.

1. File for non-profit status. This will include writing the narrative of our purposes, we’re looking for help as we explain our organization to the IRS. If you’d like to help us write Part 4 of the 1023 Form, please email info@oshwa.org and we’ll add you to the list of editors.

2. Appoint treasurer and write Budget Plan.

3. Host 2013 Open Hardware Summit in the fall.

4. Fill seats for membership to chair committees and become officers. A call for open positions will be announced.

5. Add additional board members.

6. Build membership and fundraise.

The association has its own logo! Our shiny new logo echos a circle of the same Pantone 3135C color blue we all know and love from the OSHW logo. Also note how the circles look like derivatives of one another. We thought that was pretty neat. Special thanks to our graphic designer, David Steele Overholt, who worked with our schedule to release the new design in time for the Summit!

Some history: OSHWA decided to create its own logo as we began thinking deeper about what the OSHW logo meant to our community. We wanted to differentiate ourselves as an organization and avoid confusion with regard to whether the current OSHW logo stood for the definition or the organization.

And speaking of logos, thank you everyone for being patient while OHSWA continues to work with OSI to come up with a solution beneficial to everyone. I’m happy to report that OSI’s lawyer and OSHWA’s lawyer have been working hard on a co-existence agreement.

Please take the survey created by community member Malcolm Stanley to help OSHWA benefit you!
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6MRQQY9

An open letter to the open source hardware community from OSHWA, the Open Source Hardware Association, oshwa.org

The current leadership of the Open Source Initiative (OSI, opensource.org) has brought to our attention that they feel the Open Source Hardware ‘gear’ logo infringes on their trademark.

The open source hardware logo was chosen by the community and has become a de facto standard over the past year and a half. As the founding board members of OSHWA, we feel that it is not our right nor our place to decide this issue for the community without further input. This “founding” OSHWA board was elected by the OSHWA organizers simply to do the hard work of the bootstrapping the organization: to get a bank account, to fill out IRS paperwork, to clear other organizing hurdles, and (finally) to establish membership so that we can legally vote in board members by future membership. We had hoped and envisioned that any real business to serve the open source hardware community could wait after our organization was more firmly established.

We would like to work on behalf of the community. We have before us several options, and we are interested in your feedback:

1) License the open source hardware ‘gear’ logo from OSI.
US Trademark law requires OSI to protect their mark and to notify potential infringers when they become aware of them. OSI has indicated that they would grant a trademark license to OSHWA. This would give OSI the means to protect their trademark. However, accepting such a license would establish OSI as the owner of the crowdsourced ‘gear’ logo. It would make OSI responsible for deciding where and when the logo can be used, effectively giving OSI control of defining what can and cannot be labeled as open source hardware. It could also place OSHWA in the uncomfortable position of needing to enforce OSI trademarks. We are further concerned that future OSI boards may have different opinions concerning the use of their logo and license agreements.

2) Continue to recommend the use of the ‘gear’ logo against OSI’s wishes.
This may lead OSHWA to a legal battle before we even get off the ground. While it is theoretically possible that we could successfully argue against this in court, we do feel it would be wasteful to spend our limited resources and time “infighting” with one of the few other organizations that exists to serve the open source community. Nor do we wish to drive a wedge between ourselves and the OSI, who may be important allies in battles ahead.

3) Crowdsource a new logo to represent Open Source Hardware.
A change to our current logo must include removing the keyhole shape inside the gear as this is the problematic feature according to OSI’s lawyer.  But a new logo need not be similar at all.  In any case, OSHWA would begin to recommend the new logo in its list of best practices for labeling Open Source Hardware. The myriad products and projects with the original ‘gear’ marks could be revised over time.

We encourage you to leave your comments at the bottom of this post.

Update 1: Per request, here is the license from OSI, which has been brought up in the comments.

Update 2: Please voice your opinion by Aug. 16. OSHWA will reconvene to discuss these issues after that date.

Update 3: Thanks to everyone for their comments and especially to OSI for engaging with the open source hardware community. We are encouraged by the renewed dialog with OSI and we are going to take the conversation with them offline for the moment. We’re hopeful that the outcome will be an agreement that benefits the whole OSHW community. Thank you again for your help!     (Note Added Wednesday August 8)

Update 4: OSHWA and OSI are currently working together on a co-existence agreement. In the mean time, continue to build cool stuff and share it! Thanks to Jim Jagielski for sharing this link about co-existence agreements: http://www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2006/06/article_0007.html