Open Research Institute Presentations, 15 Oct 2020

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From YouTube: Open Source Satellite Work Has Been Determined to be Free from ITAR

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Open Source Satellite Work Has Been Determined to be Free from ITAR

AMSAT Symposium 2020 Proceedings Paper: https://www.openresearch.institute/2020/10/15/amsat-symposium-2020-video-submission-and-paper/

Original Press Release: https://www.openresearch.institute/2020/08/18/cj-determination-open-source-satellite-work-is-free-of-itar/

The Final Determination letter, Commodity Jurisdiction cover letter, and the application itself can be found at:
https://github.com/phase4ground/documents/tree/master/Regulatory

The summary of the Commodity Jurisdiction request will eventually be published by the State Department at:
https://www.pmddtc.state.gov/?id=ddtc_kb_article_page&sys_id=6ea6afdcdbc36300529d368d7c96194b

ORI’s developer and participant policies can be found here:
https://openresearch.institute/developer-and-participant-policies/

Open source tools and open source hardware should be used whenever possible. There must be a constant disciplined commitment to this as part of the practical approach to open source work. One of the most exciting areas of open source FGPA design right now is the emergence of a complete end-to-end open source toolchain for FPGA work.

See Project IceStorm here:
https://github.com/YosysHQ/icestorm

With software, using a completely open source toolchain is much easier to accomplish than it is with hardware. The CERN open hardware license was designed to address this exact issue, and it does so firmly and well.

Learn more about CERN open hardware license here:
https://www.ohwr.org/cernohl

This Final Determination is a landmark result in the commercial and industrial world as well as in amateur and academic circles. Goals for the amateur radio satellite service are the absolute minimum regulatory fear and risk for amateur volunteers, and a maximum amount of free and open international technical cooperation.

Thank you! Contact ORI with questions about this Commodity Jurisdiction Request at ori@openresearch.instiute

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The united states department of state has rolled favorably on open research, institute's commodity jurisdiction, request, finding that specified information and software for a digital microwave broadband communication system for space and terrestrial amateur radio use is definitely not subject to state department, jurisdiction under itar the international traffic and arms regulations.

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This is an important step toward reducing the burden of regulations restricting international cooperation on amateur satellite projects which have impended engineering work by amateurs in the united states for decades. Export regulations divide both technical information and actual hardware into three categories.

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The most heavily restricted technologies fall under itar, which is administered by the state department technologies subject to more routine restrictions fall under ear. The export administration regulations administered by the department of commerce technologies that are not subject to either set of regulations are not restricted for export.

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On february 20 2020 open research institute filed a commodity jurisdiction request with the u.s state department seeking to establish that key technologies for amateur radio are not subject to state department, jurisdiction, information and software for a digital microwave broadband communication system for space and terrestrial amateur radio use was assigned to the case number cj000312.

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On august 11 2020 the case received a successful final determination. The technology is not subject to state department jurisdiction. This is the best possible outcome of a cj request. Two, the final determination letter commodity jurisdiction cover letter and the application itself can be found at the link in the paper in the proceedings.

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This summary of the commodity jurisdiction request will be published by the state department at the ddtc website. Under this determination, the technologies are subject to the ear. The next step is to submit a classification request to the commerce department.

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Ori anticipates that the commerce department will find that these technologies are unrestricted under the carve out for open source in the ear. This step is underway. The step after that is an advisory opinion request. This request will ask that openly. Published work ceases to be subject to the ear.

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This establishes a full chain of documentation for open source, amateur radio satellite service work, open research institute. Ori is a non-profit research and development organization, which provides all of its work to the general public under the principles of open source and open access to research. Ori is an amsat member society and is an open source initiative. Affiliate member ori does not sell memberships.

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It is registered and operates as a research institute and not a member society. The purpose of this filing is to reduce risk to technical volunteers in the amateur radio satellite service by enabling free and open international collaboration. This regulatory work was accomplished by a team of dedicated and competent open source volunteers.

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The effort was initiated by bruce parents k6bp and led by michelle thompson. W5 nyv, open research institute, developed the ideas behind the commodity, jurisdiction, request, hired thompson and burke llp for expert legal advice, organized the revisions of the document and invited organizations and three individuals with the amateur satellite service interests to join or support the request.

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Ori thanks libra space foundation and dr daniel estevez for providing their subject matter, expertise and written testimony and jam sat for helpful encouragement and support. The legal costs were fully reimbursed with a generous grant from amateur radio. Digital communications, ardc and ori share a vision of clearly establishing open source as the best and safest way to accomplish technical volunteer work in amateur radio.

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This final determination letter provides solid support for that vision. The determination enables the development of implementation guidelines that will allow free international collaboration.

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The path is clear for a number of interesting projects, facilitating new methods for terrestrial and satellite communications, opening the door to robust global digital amateur communications. Another part of the discussion with the law firm was how these results can be best used by others. This has significant relevance in industry and academia.

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Our goal is to make it as easy as possible to use the results. There were three suggestions here: one write, implementation guidelines and policies for others to adopt two help: people that have money for it make additional similar filings three write about it in popular and technical press. The goal of additional filings is to build a body of final determination, letters that solidify support a wide variety of open source work.

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This is somewhat similar to the way patent portfolios work in commercial settings. It's the sort of thing amsat can definitely help with 4.. This effort gives direct and large benefits to a large number of organizations, but it believes amsat in particular.

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It allows free and open international collaboration dramatically reduces legal risks, increases the potential volunteer corps, simplifies, fundraising and reduces management burdens. The work applies to orbits besides geo and technology besides dvb s2x, those that insist on extremely narrow final determinations can write their own commodity jurisdictions requests and expect to get the same result because they can use this one in their request as a model and reference, as said before, additional filings would be of great benefit to the community, because the population of results strengthens the case for open source work.

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However, additional filings are not strictly necessary to completely reverse the itar ear situation at organizations like amsai the key to using this result, or any like it, is that the public domain carves out in itar and ear, are solid and provides a bright path out of a bad place. In order to use them, one has to commit to documented open source policies and follow the law with regard to what constitutes publishing the safest path is to avoid the things we specifically avoided. The most important thing on that list is synthetic aperture radar.

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This is not something that we currently do, and it is not an impediment to advanced digital communications work. To avoid it. Publishing work as it is created freely available to the general public is the way to use the public domain. Carve-Outs in the law, publishing designs and data that allow the recreation of a work of software or hardware means publishing, schematics, gerber files, bills of materials, source code tools required test data test plans and the license that work uses.

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This last part is often overlooked, but is a necessary part of a compliant open source policy. Ori recommends the cern open hardware license or the tapper open hardware license for hardware. Ori recommends gpl version 3.0 for software. Any license recognized by open source initiative is an excellent starting point. Providing regular copies of work to a public library, whether in print or on dvd, is a baseline approach for a five publishing policy using github or gitlab is another recommended baseline policy.

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Ori recommends the cern open hardware license v2 because of the way it enables a useful open source hardware definition in a world dominated by a wide variety of proprietary tools. For example, fpga design is a large and growing part of our world in advanced, open source. Digital communications, since open source tools for fpga are currently not capable of executing some of the required designs. As long as the tool or component meets the definition of available component, then the use of things like proprietary tools are allowed in the production of an open source design.

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Following the example of fpga work, this means that the vhdl source code is available for free to the general public. The fpga is listed in the bill of materials and can be purchased. The version of xilinx vivado is listed and can be obtained. Ori's developer and participant policies can be found on the open research institute website. These policies were a foundation for the successful cj request and can be used as a reference.

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Open source tools and open source hardware should be used whenever possible.

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One of the most exciting areas of open source, fgpa design right now is the emergence of a complete end-to-end open source tool chain for fpga work, see project ice storm at the link in the proceedings paper with software using a completely open source tool chain is much easier to accomplish than it is with hardware.

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The cern open hardware license was designed to address this exact issue, and it does so firmly and well learn more about certain open hardware license at the link in the proceeding six paper. This final determination letter doesn't relieve anyone of having to file for a license to take hardware out of the country, but that isn't impossibly hard either. The word from experienced commercial and amateur satellite builders is that the heavy lifting has been done. We are in a good place, moving forward.

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This final determination is a landmark result in the commercial and industrial world, as well as in amateur and academic circles. Goals for the amateur radio satellite service are the absolute minimum regulatory fear and risk for amateur volunteers and a maximum amount of free and open international technical cooperation. Thank you. Contact ori with questions about this commodity jurisdiction request at ori, openresearch.institute.