History of the Open Hardware Movement - Building Open Source Hardware - page 5

who could contribute further to the project (McNamara 2007a). In 2009, McNamara an-
nounced that to better support the Open Graphics Project, the OHF's funds (the product of
donations) were being applied toward the Linux Fund 2 (McNamara 2009).
2 . The Linux Fund is an organization that has been raising funds and making donations to free and
open source software projects since 1999.
TAPR OHL
Also in 2007, TAPR created the first open hardware license. The Tucson Amateur Packet
Radio Corporation (TAPR), founded in 1982, is a nonprofit organization of amateur radio
operators with the goals of supporting R&D efforts in the area of amateur digital commu-
nications, disseminating information on packet and digital communications, providing af-
fordable and useful kits for experimenters and hobbyists, pursuing and helping advance the
amateurartofcommunications,andsupportingpublications,meetings,andstandardsinthe
area of amateur digital communications. As part of its role in supporting groups of ama-
teursworkingondigitalcommunications projects,TAPRoffershelpinturningconceptsin-
to reproducible designs and making them available as kits or finished products to others. In
2005,TAPRbeganworkingwithonesuchgroup,whichwasdevelopinghigh-performance
software-defined radio products and wanted to contribute their free time and expertise to
the ham radio community (Ackermann 2009). The group feared that their efforts might be
co-opted by commercial entities and, therefore, asked for TAPR's assistance in developing
a license to achieve their goals (Ackermann 2009). The result was the TAPR Open Hard-
ware license, the first hardware-specific open source license.
OHANDA
In July 2009, at the Grounding Open Source Hardware summit held at the Banff Center,
a group of participants created the Open Hardware Design Alliance (OHANDA). One of
the project's first goals was to launch a service for open hardware design based on a cer-
tification and registration model (OHANDA 2011). OHANDA thus created a label, in the
sense of trademark, which stands for the Four Freedoms derived from the Free Software
movement and adapted to hardware: (1) the freedom to use the device for any purpose; (2)
the freedom to study how the device works and change it (access to the complete design is
precondition to this); (3) the freedom to redistribute the device and/or design (remanufac-
ture); and (4) the freedom to improve the device and/or design, and release improvements
(and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
Designers who wish to apply the OHANDA label to their projects begin by registering
with the organization. When they do so, they accept OHANDA's terms and conditions;
that is, they grant their products' users the four freedoms the organization stands for.