It was confirmed today that Eric Schultz, community manager for the not for profit prpl Foundation, the open-source, community-driven, collaborative, foundation with a focus on enabling next-generation datacenter-to-device portable software and virtualized architectures, has been collaborating with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Technological Advisory Council Software Controlled Radios Sub-Working Group. In this role, Schultz will help educate and guide other TAC members on how proposed FCC regulations may affect the open source community and the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) – and explore how the various stakeholders can better work together.
According to Schultz, “It’s exciting to be able to share the viewpoints of the open source community as part of the overall effort to investigate how to strike an appropriate balance between protecting the radio spectrum from interference, while still allowing innovation and the flexible addition of features. These issues have been at the core of prpl Foundation and OpenWrt projects in which I participate.”
The move is very significant for the prpl Foundation which can act as a bridge between the IoT industry, the open source community, regulators and consumers, who each have different views regarding the security of IoT that are sometimes at odds. The prpl Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Embedded Computing framework fills these gaps and makes sure each stakeholder group is appeased.
“Regulators have a difficult job in ensuring the finite resource of the wireless spectrum is fairly and securely shared, while at the same time preserving the ability of developers and hobbyists to innovate in wireless devices. Home gateways and wireless routers are rapidly evolving to become the IoT hubs of the connected home, and continued innovation here is crucial to the safe and secure development of the IoT,” said Art Swift, president of the prpl Foundation. “If we can help regulators see that by using open standards for IoT, we can keep innovation very much alive and keep consumers safe as well – it’s a winning situation on all fronts.
“I am delighted Eric is collaborating with the FCC TAC to help disperse this message and we can all work together to meet the real requirements of regulators like the FCC in order to fix the broken Internet of Things.”
