GNU Radio Project Mission Statement -- Looking for Your Thoughts!

[Martin Braun]

GNU Radioers,

as the GNU Radio project matures, we're going to spend some time evolving the actual organization behind it. We'll keep you posted on updates on that, but as a first step, we'd like to define the mission statement of the GNU Radio organization.

When people think of GNU Radio, they usually think of the code itself. And that's OK, our code is our prime asset, our crown jewel. Our own website describes it as such:

"""

GNU Radio is a free & open-source software development toolkit that provides signal processing blocks to implement software radios. It can be used with readily-available low-cost external RF hardware to create software-defined radios, or without hardware in a simulation-like environment. It is widely used in research, industry, academia, government, and hobbyist environments to support both wireless communications research and real-world radio systems.

"""

The GNU Radio project is more than that, though. We run a conference, we work with industry, academia, students, hobbyists, governments.... to do all sorts of things: Be part of SDR research, be part of education, do education ourselves..... and so on.

As opposed to the GNU Radio code, we are looking to formulate a succinct mission statement for the GNU Radio Organization itself. Basically a paragraph or two that describes our purpose.

We have some thoughts, but we would like to ask this open-ended question to everyone here to hear your input.

If you would like to see other organization's mission statements, the KDE e.V. is a similar organization (albeit much bigger). You can find their purpose in their statutes: https://ev.kde.org/corporate/statutes/ (however, I deliberately didn't paste it here for those who want to think about it.

Why are we doing this?

Well, as I said, we're trying to grow the organization itself. A mission statement is a very useful tool when engaging in partners (e.g., when we're trying to insert GNU Radio into a publicly funded project), sponsors, or educational institutions. And maybe we'll create an actual organization, or e.V. of our own where we'll need this anyway.

We're interested to hear your thoughts and ideas!

Cheers,

Martin