Manifesto of the Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation

The Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation, hereinafter referred to as FOSSi Foundation, is a non-profit foundation with the mission to promote and assist free and open digital hardware designs and their related ecosystems. FOSSi Foundation operates as an open, inclusive, vendor-independent group.

Values

We identify great value in promoting collaborative free and open source digital design. In particular the following are core values of the foundation:

• open technology standards are better than proprietary, closed equivalents
• free and open source implementations and their reuse lead to mature IP and has an inherent economic advantage
• a constructive, collaborative approach to development improves IP and helps to foster communities
• knowledge sharing is important to encourage wider participation in the field

Goals

The above values are imbued in the following goals of the FOSSi Foundation. The foundation shall

• support and promote open standards development and their use in digital hardware designs and their related ecosystems
• support community events and organize regular events relating to free and open digital hardware design and their ecosystems
• encourage industry participation in free and open source silicon IP design and their related ecosystems
• assist hobbyists and academic institutions with opening their digital hardware design and related ecosystems work to the public
• support the development and maintenance of a web site, aimed at providing a platform for
  • an aggregate list of open source IP projects, tools and organisations from across the internet relating to open source digital design, increasing their exposure which should lead to increased collaboration and IP reuse
  • documentation and reference implementations for open standards
  • technical reference and instructional materials aimed at lowering the barriers of entry, such as
    • promoting community interaction by listing ways of contacting and interacting with the various communities that have IP listed on the site
    • mailing lists or other tools to assist community interaction will be provided upon request