Luis Rodriguez

Luis is a full time Linux kernel developer at SUSE Labs helping with Linux world domination. He has been hacking on Linux since he was a college student after realizing a piece of hardware he purchased did not work with his Operating System. Luis has been in the trenches within the community, R&D community and later the corporate world while trying to address regulatory concerns for supporting FOSS drivers for wireless technologies. Luis is the author of the regulatory infrastructure used on the Linux kernel which paved the way to enable corporations to embrace not only FOSS drivers but also FOSS firmware. Luis is also one of the lead developers behind the Linux backports project which strives to automatically backport device drivers.

Luis has previously been tasked to address patent concerns while helping companies pursue an active role when contributing upstream to FOSS projects. In response to this effort Luis strived to create an economic quantifiable appreciation for active collaboration and innovation with the FOSS community. His experiences with addressing regulatory and patent challenges for the FOSS community and his long standing experience with collaborative development models have driven him to become a vocal advocate of the Open Hardware movement. Luis contends that the Open Hardware movement is a key requirement to the long term success of the FOSS community. Luis is a firm believer that Open Hardware development is where the best evolutionary methodology for the combination of best hardware and software will come about. He has joined the OSHWA board to help boost education, bridge collaboration between both the FOSS and OSHW communities where possible, and to ensure nothing stands in the way of rapid innovation for the community.