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41	41	A lot of the candidates statements say they want to increase membership and funding. OK, that's obviously good for most organizations, but what are we going to //do //with it? I'd encourage those folks to go back to their pages and write more about //policy.// There //is //a lot of it that we should be working upon.
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	43	+== Amateur Radio and Open Source ==
	44	+
	45	+I am a Radio Amateur, with callsign K6BP. Ham radio was the first Internet, actually a steampunk Internet with spark transmitters and electron tubes at the start, and has had a tradition of open innovation and sharing of designs since the 1910's. So, it's fitting that I approached Linux and Open Source because I was trying to make software for radio hams.
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	47	+I was founder of No-Code International, which lobbied for the end of Morse Code examinations as a criteria for ham radio licensing. This required that we modify a treaty of the International Telecommunications Union (a UN organization) to allow all of the member nations to remove their Morse Code requirements. We were successful, and as far as I am aware all nations other than Russia removed their Morse Code requirements. This resulted in an increase of licensed Radio Amateurs in the United States, with the result that more people actually use Morse Code on the air today than any time since voice and text replaced the manual telegraph. So, everybody won. We also headed off what looked like the impending death of Amateur Radio as members aged out and the ranks of hams diminished. Today I remain active on Amateur Radio policy. Here's my most recent [[chat on Ham Radio Now>>url:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVqzs4HA59w]].
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	49	+I have been active in evangelizing Open Source digital voice communications, founding the [[Codec2 project>>url:http://www.rowetel.com/?page_id=452]] and recruiting the main developer. Today, we have an Open Source voice codec that can use as little as 700 bits per second, and our [[FreeDV>>url:https://freedv.org/]] delivers good quality voice using as little as 1.2 KHz of bandwidth on HF radio, using both an Open Source codec and Open Source softmodem.
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43	43	== Relationship of Open Source and Free Software ==
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45	45	Open Source is standing on the shoulders of Richard Stallman and the //Free Software// movement which he created. Richard deserves our honor. My intent in founding OSI was to promote the idea of Free Software to business people in a way that they would understand, in the hope that many of them would eventually develop sympathy to Richard's presentation. And many have! Open Source licenses and Free Software licenses don't have any fundamental differences. We're working for the same thing. Those who try to split our camps in two don't understand what we're about.\\