The Open Hardware Summit is coming to Scotland!

Author : sidney Date : September 12, 2024

We are beyond excited to share our new design for this year from Tanya Brassie of Inner Loop Press! Check out their work!

And we are going to be coming to Edinburgh on May 30th & 31st, 2025! Our call for proposals for talks, workshops, and exhibitors is currently open and we’re also building an amazing team of on-the-ground helpers and teammates, read on for more details!

Our Summit Fellowship applications are also now open and we encourage anyone marginalized people in open technology and culture to apply to receive a stipend for attendance and mentorship opportunities leading up to the event.

Get involved

Here’s what we’re looking for:

  • People who can help us reach the weird, wonderful, and technical open source, Hacker, DIY, tech/art and maker community in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and all around the UK and Europe.
  • People who are connected with makerspaces, hackerspaces, labs or other creative spaces that can help spread the word all around the world.
  • People who are excited about reaching diverse and underrepresented populations.
  • Spaces interesting in hosting workshops, parties, community gatherings and other happenings.
  • Seasoned open source enthusiast and people who want to be involved in open source but aren’t sure how. No experience required.
  • Be able to attend (or contribute to asynchronously) to meetings once a month, usually Wednesday mornings in US Eastern Time (UTC-4) or around 5 PM GMT (UTC+1).

Specifically, we are still looking for a venue for day 2, which can hold people in various rooms for breakout sessions and workshops.

We do not require that all presentations, organizers, or helpers be open source certified or contribute to open source projects, but only that you are enthusiastic about sharing and learning about open source work.

Here’s what you’ll get:

  • Connected with some of the world’s most active open source communities. Past sponsors have included Sparkfun, Arduino, Digikey, and other key players in the hardware community.
  • A free or discounted ticket to the event.
  • Free opportunity to exhibit your work to over 300 people.
  • A hand in forming the vision for one of the largest Open Source events in 2025.
  • An unforgettable experience with cool people from around the world!
  • An opportunity to connect globally with people working in your field- be it academically, recreationally, or within the industry.

If you are interested in helping out, please email us at hello@leecyb.org.

See you in Edinburgh!

OSHWA is hiring Biomed and Policy Researchers

Author : alicia Date : August 22, 2024

OSHWA has three part-time job opportunities for postdoctoral researchers for an NSF project on open-source health hardware. 

OSHWA is creating an Open Healthware Ecosystem to bring together the emerging open-source health hardware community, and to encourage the shared development of health-related hardware designs using open hardware certification. In the first year, the project will focus on facilitating agreement on standardization for a health-related open hardware certification, developing on-ramps for the health-related hardware community to learn about open hardware, and building education campaigns and workshops around documentation needed for the new health-specific certification. In the second year, the project will focus on issues around quality assurance and shared testing protocols for the purposes of an open hardware certification, which are critical to the adoption of health hardware outside of emergency use authorization circumstances.

OSHWA is seeking to fill three roles:

Two (2) biomedical/ biomedical policy postdoctoral researchers will be focused on understanding the emerging open-source health hardware community, utilizing the workshops to gather input and findings, creating documents based on the workshops, writing case studies, and pairing the open hardware certification to health devices.

One (1) (bio)engineering/fabrication postdoctoral researcher will recreate and test open source health hardware.

The Postdoctoral Researchers will be responsible for conducting research on open source hardware within the health space, the OSHWA certification, and policies affecting healthcare; and working with the open hardware health community to come to conclusions. 

Compensation: $50,000 per year for a 50% position

Research project timeline: 2 years: September 2024 – July 2026

Location: This is a virtual role, though travel will be required

Deadline: Rolling until positions filled

Reporting: Post docs will report to the Executive Director

Specific job duties: 

  • Plans and conducts day-to-day activities relating to the Open Healthware research project. 
  • Synthesizes, analyzes, and summarizes workshop and interview results
  • Utilizes professional concepts to contribute to the development of a health hardware certification process through creative and effective ways; 
  • Produces one Journal article with findings at the end of two-year research period;
  • Retains accurate records of research findings, along with analysis of results, in a detailed up-to-date notebook;
  • Follows guidelines on data entry, conservation, and sharing; 
  • Attends weekly meetings, NSF trainings and cohort meetings, and attend in-person workshops and conferences;

Other Responsibilities:

  • Remains current on relevant health devices and industry knowledge;
  • Interfaces with the community on collaborative programs, including doctors, engineers, scientists, manufacturers; 
  • Assists the team with documenting and updating protocols and procedures as needed;
  • Assists and collaborating with written reports;
  • Applies for future sustaining grants;
  • Other duties as assigned.

Qualifications

  • A PhD and experience in biomedical engineering, biomedical engineering policy, or similar field. Knowledgeable about manufacturing health or medical devices, or about policy and standards in that area. 
  • Knowledge about open source and the functions of open source hardware
  • Successful at designing and concluding studies 
  • Experience assisting in building communities
  • Detailed communication skills, especially in documentation writing
  • Uses collaboration and listening skills to solve problems

OSHWA is an Equal Opportunity Employer. OSHWA is committed to a policy of equal treatment and opportunity in every aspect of its hiring and promotion process without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, pregnancy or childbirth (or related medical condition), sexual orientation, partnership status, gender and/or gender identity or expression, marital, parental or familial status, caregiver status, national origin, ethnicity, alienage or citizenship status, veteran or military status, age, disability, predisposing genetic characteristics, domestic violence victim status, unemployment status, or any other legally protected basis. Women, racial and ethnic minorities, persons of minority sexual orientation or gender identity, individuals with disabilities, and veterans are encouraged to apply for vacant positions at all levels.

To apply for this position:

  1. Fill out this application form
  2. Email your CV to alicia@oshwa.org

OSHWA awarded NSF POSE grant

Author : sidney Date : August 21, 2024

OSHWA is thrilled to announce that on August 15th, we were awarded a 2-year National Science Foundation (NSF) POSE grant to create an Open Healthware Ecosystem. The grant for the Open Healthware Ecosystem will be highly specified research looking at the intersections between health hardware and open source hardware principles including certification. As we discovered during the pandemic, open source hardware has been instrumental in enabling rapid response and preventing supply chain issues in critical moments. For example, distributed manufacturing of open source face shields assisted in PPE production during the COVID-19 pandemic which was critical in the early days when even medical workers could not obtain necessary supplies. 

The Open Healthware Ecosystem will bring together the emerging open-source health hardware community, and encourage the shared development of health-related hardware designs through coupling health hardware to the open hardware certification. In the first year, the research team will focus on facilitating agreement on standardization for a health-related open hardware certification, developing on-ramps for the health-related hardware community to learn about open hardware, and building education campaigns and workshops around documentation needed for the new health-specific certification. In the second year, OSHWA will focus on issues around quality assurance and shared testing protocols for the purposes of an open hardware certification, which are critical to the adoption of health hardware outside of emergency use authorization circumstances.

This is the first government grant the Open Source Hardware Association has received.

OSHWA needs your help

Author : sidney Date : July 9, 2024

OSHWA is in a pickle! In the US where our not for profit is registered there is a law stating that one third of all income must be from the public, while we have been extremely lucky to have received private grants if we don’t have enough public contributions our status will be revoked.

Today we are launching a merch fundraiser with an incredible design from artist Jess Hannigan that will help us keep going. You can snag your own tee/hoodie/v-neck right here you’ll be helping us maintain our status and any additional funds raised will go right back into making cool things happen in our community!

Thank you for a wonderful OHS2024

Author : alicia Date : June 28, 2024

The Open Hardware Summit 2024 was a huge success! Thank you Montréal! A giant thanks to our sponsors who make this event possible and enable us to pay our small but mighty staff. Videos are available by speaker on our YouTube channel, or you can relive the whole day here. Photos are on OSHWA’s flickr page.

If you enjoy our events, please consider donating so that we can keep putting them on!

The 2024 Open Hardware Summit

Author : sidney Date : March 19, 2024

On May 3rd and 4th in Montreal, Canada the Open Source Hardware Organization (OSHWA) will be hosting the 2024 Open Hardware Summit, featuring 2 full days of workshops, talks, unconference and discussion sessions dedicated to exploring Open Source Hardware. If you can’t make it in person, we’re also holding sessions online via YouTube and Discord. 

Our branding this year was created by Enna Kim, who worked with us to create our 2024 logo as well as a series of characters. We love the playful nature of the loombot, the googly eyed integrated circuit and the tangles of wires that we think reflects what we’re trying to pull off for OHS2024. We want the Summit to be engaging, intriguing, full of surprises and chock full of radical, new ideas. 

Above all else we’re excited to be able to gather together the open source community to explore all the ways that ‘open’ exists!

Here’s the thing: we know it’s a long trip for some of ya’ll. Thankfully we offer many ways to experience the Summit, both in-person in Montreal and online with a fully hybrid conference. We are working hard to be sure that no matter how you attend you will get as much as possible out of OHS2024. With the help of livestreaming, our Discord server and lots of volunteer coordination you can participate in talks, Q&A’s with speakers, propose topics and participate in a digital unconference on Day Two! 

Even though the 3rd and 4th are our official dates we are also excited to have programming around both sides of the conference. 

On May 2nd there will be a mini reuse make-a-thon to practice your recycling skills, plus an open source perfume workshop and a Happy Hardware Hour hosted by Helen Leigh and Crowd Supply! 

The official Summit will start on May 3rd at Concordia University. 

We are excited to welcome Danielle Boyer, an Indigenous robotics expert, as the keynote speaker. Boyer will be speaking on her work creating robots to revitalize Indigenous languages, and utilizing them to address the systemic oppression of the Anishinaabe community. It’s certain to be a talk that you do not want to miss. 

This is just one of the incredible parts of OHS this year.  

We have also managed to fit in 19 other talks ranging from e-textile manufacturing to making bespoke open hardware for your loved ones to open source medical devices, the topics and quality of the speakers is truly wonderful. 

We also noticed a heavy push to discuss the environmental impacts of making with proposals this year that resulted in talks on repurposing disposable vapes, addressing pollution in hardware production, and developing sustainable biomaterials for 3D printing. 

On top of all that we also have a dedicated table hour where people can explore the very rad offerings like a diy computer repair zine, afrofuturist devices for speculative PTSD treatment, and modding gameboys.

Even though it’s such a full day we know some of ya’ll will still need to let off some steam which means we’re going to have an afterparty where you can hang out, socialize and dance until you are exhausted. 

On Day Two we will be moving to LESPACEMAKER for workshops, unconference and discussion groups. For those joining us IRL workshops range from building robots, finding wi-fi access points to making paper. Make sure you sign up for workshop offerings so you don’t miss out! 

We know that our community loves to explore ideas in-depth and we wanted to be sure there was time for folks to discuss thoughts they had come up over the course of Day One so we’ve got space for discussion groups. 

Plus all Day One both in-person and online attendees can suggest unconference topics that will be voted on in the evening to have sessions running smoothly on Day Two. Unconference topics can really be anything and will have space dedicated to be able to present to one another. 

With that we’ll come to the official close of OHS2024. 

On our unofficial Day 3 we will be gathering at CyberLoveHotel for a relaxing, sharing and zinemaking session. 

All this to say that we really can’t wait to see everyone this year. Please register for the Open Hardware Summit and join us however works for you. You can keep up with all the latest news on OHS2024 online on Twitter, Mastodon and LinkedIn.

2022-2023 OHCA Reflection and Enabling Practices

Author : alicia Date : January 24, 2024

Thanks to the generous support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, OSHWA took a giant step toward expanding open source hardware in academia with our new Open Hardware Creators in Academia Fellowship. We look forward to expanding future cohorts and the guides or playbooks they will create to advance open hardware within academia.

We released our cohort’s Enabling Practices document, which contains several links and checklists inside the document itself. While creating this document through the lens of shared ‘Best Practices’, the cohort quickly recognized that their University structures, even limited to an American cohort, were so vastly different, that one set of best practices would not suffice. Some academics owned their research and others did not, some had a form of Tech Transfer Office and others did not, many spanned the landscape of positions one could hold at a University. Some had their Dean’s support in open hardware and others did not. Depending on these differences, “best” practices varied drastically.  Some enabling practices may not be a one-size fits all solution, but our fellows and the universities they navigate represent a broad spectrum of American universities. We shifted the terminology to enabling practices to encompass more types of universities, where “best” would imply that one university type would be prioritized with which practices work in that system.

The main take away from these sessions collectively was that there is a difference between the creation of open hardware and the advocacy for open hardware to have a place in academia. These roles took different skill sets to move forward, different verbiage, and worked toward different outputs. These conversations were merely a starting point. There is much discussion over time needed to truly force change for higher education to default to open hardware.

We compiled a list of links and resources this Fellowship created, with newly added cohort documents. There are still several fellows waiting for Journal publication dates as well, so check back for new resources!

Cohort documents:

2023 Open Hardware Summit Talks:

Individual Fellow Outputs:

Welcome Thea Flowers, New OSHWA Board President

Author : michael Date : January 14, 2024

I am thrilled to be able to welcome Thea “Stargirl” Flowers as the new OSHWA Board President!

As many members of the OSHWA community already know, Thea is a creative technologist and passionate open source advocate.  She is the creator of the Winterbloom open source synthesizers (many of which are OSHWA certified).  Thea is also the creator of KiCanvas, a maintainer of CircuitPython, and a former Python Software Foundation Fellow.  Oh, and she recently redesigned the certification mark brand guide.

While this marks the end of my tenure as OSHWA Board President, I am excited to remain on the board and support Thea, Alicia, and OSHWA however I can.  I also want to thank Alicia and the OSHWA board(s) for allowing me to serve as Board President for the past few years.  It has been fantastic to be a part of OSHWA’s growth and maturation.

I know the rest of the OSHWA community joins me in celebrating Thea’s new role, and is eager to benefit from the energy and ideas she brings with her.

OSHWA Files Brief in Support of Using, Repairing, and Hacking Things You Own

Author : michael Date : December 18, 2023

Earlier this month OSHWA, along with Public Knowledge, the Digital Right to Repair Coalition, Software Freedom Conservancy, iFixIt, and scholars of property and technology law, filed a brief in the US Court of Appeals supporting the principle that owning something means that you get to decide how to use it.  While that principle has been part of US (and, before there was a US, British) law for centuries, recent attempts to protect copyright have worked to undermine it.

We filed the brief in a case that EFF has brought on behalf of Dr. Matthew Green and Dr. bunnie Huang (someone who is well known to the open source hardware community) challenging the constitutionality of parts of the US law that prevent access to digital works.This issue is important to the open source hardware community because owning hardware is a critical part of building and sharing hardware.

The Issue

The case focuses on Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).  The DMCA is probably best known for its Section 512 notice and takedown regime for works protected by copyright online (that’s the “DMCA” in a “DMCA Notice” or “DMCA Takedown” that removes videos from YouTube).  Section 1201 is a different part of the law that creates legal protections for digital locks that limit access to copyright-protected works.  

Basically, Section 1201 is a special law that makes it illegal to break DRM.  And as long as DRM prevents you from using your toaster how you see fit, you don’t really own it. 

These protections were originally designed to protect digital media – think the encryption of DVDs.  However, since code is protected by copyright, and just about everything has code embedded in it, the 1201 protections undermine ownership rights in a huge range of things.

The brief illustrates how 1201-protected DRM undermines traditional rules of ownership in a number of different ways:

  • The right to repair: DRM blocks third-party parts or fixes, monopolizing the repair market or forcing consumers to throw away near-working devices.
  • The right to exclude: DRM spies on consumers and opens insecure backdoors on their computers, allowing malicious software to enter from anywhere.
  • The right to use: DRM prevents consumers from using their devices as they wish. A coffee machine’s DRM may prohibit the brewing of other companies’ coffee pods, for example. 
  • The right to possess: Device manufacturers have leveraged DRM to dispossess consumers of their purchases, without legal justification.

The Challenge

This case is challenging Section 1201 on First Amendment grounds.  As written, the law imposes content-based restrictions on speech.  Tools for circumventing DRM can advise users on how and why to protect their property rights.  Prohibiting them means that the law gives legal benefits to anti-ownership DRM software while criminalizing pro-ownership DRM-circumvention software.

Additionally, whatever one thinks about using DRM to protect digital media, the current law is not well tailored to achieve that goal.  Today, DRM has been added to all sorts of devices that are very far from “digital media” in any reasonable sense.  As the brief notes: 

“Devices like refrigerators have [DRM] not to stop rampant refrigerator copyright piracy, but so manufacturers can maintain market dominance, block competition, and force wasteful consumerism that boosts those manufacturers’ bottom lines.”  

These uses of DRM are protected by the current law but have nothing to do with protecting digital media.

What’s Next

This brief is part of an appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.  It will be argued in the coming months.  EFF’s page on the case is here.

We want to end this post with a huge thank you to Professor Charles Duan, the author of our brief.  Professor Duan does a great job of bringing clarity to this important issue facing the open source hardware community. Plus, you always know any brief written by him will include citations reaching back centuries.  This brief shows that case law reaching back to 1604 is still relevant to questions about ownership today!