Mission

Being an open project, OpenCyphal is critically dependent on direct contributions from its adopters. This Consortium is a non-profit organization created to ensure the future of OpenCyphal and to provide a neutral collaboration platform for the stakeholders. The core objectives of the Consortium are:

• To provide a governing body tasked with defining the long-term project strategy based on input from its members.
• To support, promote, and standardize the Cyphal technology and expand the Cyphal ecosystem.
• To provide legal protection for the project in relevant markets and regions across the world. This includes trademark management and enforcement of the licensing terms.
• To serve as a testing and certification organization, validating the conformance of hardware and software products to the published Cyphal standards. Vendors whose products have been shown to be conformant are granted the license to use the official Cyphal Conformity Mark (shown on the image).
• To provide consulting services to members, key open-source projects, and non-profit organizations leveraging Cyphal to ensure the long-term health and sustainability of the ecosystem.

Membership

Expertise, workforce, and finances contributed by members of the Consortium make it possible to sustain the development and maintenance of the technical specifications, reference implementations, key software tools, and other critical components that the entire Cyphal ecosystem rests upon.

Members are entitled to direct benefits depending on the membership tier: Sponsored, Regular, or Expert.

Sponsored members are entitled to:

• Participate in the technical steering and internal strategic goal setting.
• Access the member-only library of example applications, demos, and documentation. The library helps members speed up the development and testing of Cyphal-enabled systems.
• Take part in surveying the adopter base and get access to the raw results.

Regular tier members are entitled to the following benefits in addition to the above:

• Submit hardware and software products for conformance testing against the Cyphal specifications. Conformance testing is performed by the OpenCyphal Consortium experts for an additional fee established on a case-by-case basis depending on the complexity of the product and the scope of the tested functionality. This activity also includes consulting services intended to help the vendor reach full conformance with the applicable specifications.
• Use the Cyphal Conformity Mark with conformant products.

Expert tier members are entitled to the following benefits in addition to all of the above:

• List conformant products in the Conformant Product Directory.
• Add domain-specific and vendor-specific data types to the public regulated data type repository (subject to approval by the maintainers).
• Access translations of the core technical documentation and specifications in Chinese, Russian, and other languages.

The membership fees are specified in the following table. To qualify for Sponsored membership, the applicant shall represent one of the following:

• an accredited academic institution;
• a registered non-profit organization;
• an open source project hosted or mirrored on GitHub, Bitbucket, or GitLab that is starred, watched, or forked by at least 100 users.

To become a member, please fill out the application form and send it to consortium@opencyphal.org.

Member profiles

End system manufacturer:

• Manage the complexity of vehicular intelligence by adopting the solution specifically designed for the task.
• Rely on robust technology and steer its development to address future challenges.
• Collaborate with COTS equipment providers.
• Avoid the risk of vendor lock-in by using an open and permissively licensed standard.

COTS equipment or software vendor:

• Use the Cyphal Conformity Mark to gain trust of customers and increase the market share.
• Get listed in the official Conformant Product Directory.
• Ensure compliance with the key reference implementations.
• Produce relevant reference designs and development kits.
• Participate in joint marketing activities.
• Stay in the loop and predict future trends.

Open source, R&D, consulting:

Any enterprise whose core activities involve Cyphal is welcome to join the Consortium to help sustain the development of the project and take part in its management and technical steering.