Focus Open Source Hardware Origins OpenRISC community | Location London, United Kingdom Area served Worldwide | |
Founded 2015; 2 years ago (2015) Type Community Interest Company | ||
The Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation (FOSSi Foundation) is a non-profit foundation with the mission to promote and assist free and open digital hardware designs and their related ecosystems. It was set up by the core OpenRISC development team in response to decreasing support from the commercial owners of the opencores.org website.
FOSSi operates as an open, inclusive, vendor-independent group. It identifies its mission as the following activities:
FOSSi is the legal entity, owner of the librecores.org website, the primary portal for the user community. It holds an annual conference (ORConf) and organizes an annual student design contest.
History
During 2015, ORSoC AB, commercial owners of opencores.org formed a joint venture with KNCMiner AB to develop bitcoin mining machines. As this became the primary focus of the business, they spent less time on the opencores.org project. In response to the growing lack of commitment, the core OpenRISC development team set up the Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation (FOSSi), and registered the libreCores.org website, as the basis for all future development, independent of commercial control.
In 2016, the librecores.org development is intensifying and the annual "LibreCores Student Design Contest" was announced The FOSSi Foundation is an umbrella organization in the Google Summer of Code 2016.