gnumonks.org

Welcome to LaForge's ancient, obsolete Homepage

Despite being online since the early 90ies, unfortunately I never really get around building a real homepage. There's always more important and more interesting stuff to do (about which you can read at

• my less ancient homepage/blog) and/or
• my fediverse/twitter feeds

I'm an active member of the Free Software / Open Source community. I've either started or contributed to a large number of Free Software projects ever since getting in touch with Free Software in 1995. The most well-known roject so far was netfilter/iptables, that is the firewalling subsystem of the Linux 2.4/2.6 kernel.

In recent years I have not had time to work on netfilter/iptables anymore, but am constantly moving from one professional field to another. I have extensively worked with various RFID technologies (software stack, device firmware), written smartcard redaer drivers, ventured into statistical process control, helped to design and implement an electronic document archieval and retrieval system, and became the lead system level software architect of the worlds' first 100% Open Free Software based mobile phone (OpenMoko).

From 2008 to early 2010 I served as Open Source Liaison of VIA Technology, a major semiconductor vendor. During Q3 and Q4 of 2009, I had the pleasure to help Samsung System LSI to align their Linux kernel development with mainline and improve interaction with the kernel community. System LSI is the part of Samsung who make the s3c24xx, s3c64xx and s5pXXXX ARM based System-on-a-Chips.

Starting from early 2009 into 2010, my work has become more focused on GSM protocols, more specifically the OpenBSC and OsmocomBB projects.

Even more recently (2011), I've started to implement the ETSI TETRA trunked radio standard, which has now become the OsmocomTETRA project.

Since 2011, I'm also the co-founder of a company called sysmocom - systems for mobile communications GmbH, a Berlin based company aimed at providing commercial solutions and support related to Free Software GSM related projects

I continue to do consulting and development in the areas of data communications, communications security for various different entities.

If you are looking for papers/slides of presentations I have given at various conferences, follow this link.

If you want to know more about what I'm doing, you may want to have a look at

• My weblog/blog/journal
sort-of an online journal of what I am doing (no comment function, so it's not Web 2.0)
• Homepage of the netfilter project
where I am serve as chairman of the core team
• hmw-consulting.de homepage
My linux/networking consulting business
• Harald Welte at Wikipedia
A wikipedia page that people have started about me
• The Berlin Chaos Computer Club
The Berlin chapter of the German hacker organization Chaos Computer Club, where I'm serving as a board member
• The OpenBSC project
An effort to implement the minimal subset of a GSM network as Free and Open Source Software
• The OsmocomBB project
An effort to implement a telephone-side GSM stack and baseband processor firmware as Free and Open Source Software
• The OsmocomTETRA project
An effort to implement a Free Software implementation of the TETRA readio and protocol stack.
• The deDECTed project
An effort into security research of the DECT cordless telephony system
• The gnufiish project
An effort to port Linux, freesmartphone.org and OpenMoko to the E-TEN glofiish phones
• The gpl-violations.org project
An effort to document past and present violations of the GNU General Public License
• The OpenEZX.org project
Trying to build a 100% Free Software Linux distribution for the Motorola smartphones A780, E680, A1200, ...
• The OpenMRTD.org project
Developing Free Software for RFID-enabled biometric ePassports
• The OpenPCD.org project
Free Hardware design and Software for RFID readers
• The OpenBeacon.org project
Free Hardware design and Software for 2.4GHz active RFID system
• The OpenTom project
Various hacks for the TomTom GO GPS navigation system
• OpenMoko
A project for a completely Free and Open GSM Smartphone running GNU/Linux
• GPL Devices Wiki
• A wiki for documenting the hardware and software of devices that run GPL licensed software (mostly embedded Linux).
• My very old homepage
containing lots of old stuff including my personal photo album
• My advogato page
containing some references to other projects I've worked on and an old diary
• Chaosradio
The CCC's monthly radio show in Berlin, where I used to regularly participate
• VIA Linux portal
Where VIA publishes code and documents for the FOSS community
• My projects (broken links in that page, I know. Don't have time for that kind of stuff, need to get real work done)

© 1999-2010 by Harald Welte