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142 lines
7 KiB
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---
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title: Concept and team
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---
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Our mission is to develop robust digital infrastructure. We achieve this goal
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by continuous maintenance of permissively licensed (MIT/ISC/BSD) open
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source libraries, which are used by various partners and supporters.
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We strive to enable more people to run their own digital
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infrastructure. Minimising the executable size of services and cutting down
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complexity is crucial to help people to understand the technology.
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Rewards (in terms of shirts, money, stickers, hardware, retreats) for
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contributors of the open source community are part of the funding plan.
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Academic papers and talks at workshops and technical conferences will be
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written to document the development and deployment of the technology.
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The annual balance will be opened for the public to satisfy transparency what
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donations and funding is used for.
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### Non-profit company
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Robur is part of the [Center for the Cultivation of
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Technology](https://techcultivation.org), a charitable non-profit company.
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Our budget stems from three pillars: donations from supporters, grants, and
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commercial contracts (features or products). For our mission, it is crucial
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that all our developed libraries are permissively licensed and open source.
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Supporters can make donations to robur, which will be used for further
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development and maintainence of software and community infrastructure. We plan
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to get a donation platform (from our host company) in the second quarter of
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2018, which will automatically generates tax-deductible receipts. If you like
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to donate (>YYYY) € now, please get in touch with us and we will manually
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process your donation. We accept bitcoin donations (see
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[contact](/Contact)).
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Various foundations, research councils, countries, have grants for open source
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projects which improve the current state of digital technology. We keep an eye
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on these, and apply where appropriate. If you want to partner up with a
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specific proposal, let us know.
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Companies can contract robur to develop prototypes (see example
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[projects](/Projects)). Developed libraries are open sourced under a
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permissive license, to be reusable by other interested parties.
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The application code itself can be exclusively owned by the funding partner.
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Examples include branding, configuration and the concrete composition of libraries.
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Negotiable terms include time-limited exclusively licenses, service level
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agreements (on-call troubleshooting, running infrastructure, updates), early
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access on new development, influencing on the development roadmap.
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#### 2018
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We start our endeavour in 2018. Our budget consists at the moment of 6 bitcoin
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converted to € and [prototypefund](https://prototypefund.de/project/robur-io/).
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We are still looking for funding. 2018 will be our first year, starting with a
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team of three, hopefully five at the end of the year.
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### Team
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#### Catherine
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Catherine runs an independent software consultancy from Wisconsin, USA. She
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mostly writes code and tests, and builds tools for doing the same.
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She has been a member of technical staff at a famous container company, a
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research assistant at a famous English university, lead embedded systems
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programmer at an obscure maker of network middleboxes, a network security
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analyst at a large utility company, a systems administrator at a graduate space
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research department, a sorter of discarded things, and a maker of sandwiches.
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She harnesses entropy and fights bitrot.
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Catherine has worked extensively on the MirageOS TCP/IP network stack and is a
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member of the project's core team. She managed the release of MirageOS's latest
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major version.
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In her free time, Catherine enjoys bothering cats, playing board games, and
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embroidery.
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#### Eva
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Eva is an infrastructure software engineer and a researcher.
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She studied Applied Computer Science in the Natural Sciences, and developed a typechecker for a compiler of a language for optimization problems. In her PhD project she developed metrics to compare forest data structures, with an application in molecular structure comparison. Working as a postdoc in cancer research on molecular structure prediction, she found her way to Brooklyn and Berlin.
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In the US tech industry, she works on infrastructure problems with distributed systems on a large scale with millions of users, developing API infrastructure and search infrastructure, with a focus on stateless systems.
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Her Erdős number is 4.
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#### Hannes
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Hannes enjoys living in Berlin, Germany. Until end of 2017, he used to be a research
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associate at the University of Cambridge in the [rems](https://rems.io) project.
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He enjoys to write code, and also travelling and repairing his recumbent
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bicycle, and being a barista.
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Hannes did his PhD in computer science about [formal verification of imperative
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code](https://itu.dk/research/tomeso/) (using a higher-order separation logic
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and the theorem prover Coq). Hannes co-authored [not-quite-so-broken
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TLS](https://nqsb.io), a TLS implementation from the grounds up in OCaml, and
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contributes to the MirageOS project as a core team member. He is working on
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various projects, including opam signing and
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[netsem](https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/Netsem/), an executable formal model of
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TCP/IP which can act as a test validator.
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#### Paul
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Paul is an independent IT consultant located in Copenhagen.
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Paul has a background in penetration testing, protocol design, applied
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cryptography, and architectural IT security system design for customers in
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especially the banking, insurance, and pension fund sectors. He has been
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consulting on [BPAY integration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BPAY) in
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Australia, and conducting web and network security assessments for customers
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throughout the world.
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Lately he has spent the last three years writing OCaml and has been working with
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IT security, dev-ops and automated deployment for customers specializing in
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Enterprise Resource Planning, Internet of Things, and medical technology.
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In his spare time he dabbles in research into similar topics and serialization
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frameworks, in addition to the enjoyable pursuit of tabletop roleplaying and
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social interactions in smokey pubs - two disciplines that he excels in, but that
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have somehow not been of particular interest to paying customers (yet).
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#### Martin
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Martin has been programming since before programming was trendy, eating [Sharp
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SC61860A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_PC-1350) machine code for
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breakfast since before it was healthy, and using Linux way back when it was
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just Linus Torvalds' glorified terminal emulator.
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A founding member of Unikernel Systems (later acquired by Docker), Martin has
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been involved in a number of library operating system projects since 2014,
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including the [rumprun](http://repo.rumpkernel.org/rumprun) unikernel and
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[MirageOS][https://mirage.io/]. He is a co-author of
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[Solo5][https://github.com/Solo5/solo5], a secure execution environment for
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unikernels, and joins robur in 2018 to continue his work towards creating
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secure software that "just works" and other ambitious projects.
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Martin lives with his family in Bratislava, Slovakia and in his spare time
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enjoys hiking, yachting and the arts.
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