John Ackermann, N8UR

John and Cousin Irving
John (left) visiting with Febo's cousin Irving
Mumbai, India (05/2001)

I work at NCR Corporation in Atlanta, Georgia as an in-house lawyer. I provide legal support to NCR's Customer Services business, which provides hardware maintenance and software support for our customers, as well as its Retail Industry line of business. I'm also responsible for software licensing across the company.

I'm particularly interested in copyright issues and the questions that the Internet and electronic commerce raise about intellectual property rights. I'm very interested in the legal issues surrounding the Open Source Movement and I've given numerous presentations on open source licensing, including at the University of Dayton School of Law Computer and Cyberspace Law program. My materials and presentations are available for download here. Prior to moving to Georgia in 2010, I was also an adjunct professor at the UD School of Law, where I taught courses on Licensing Intellectual Property. I'm also the author of one of the first licenses attempting to create an open source environment for hardware development, the TAPR Open Hardware License.

My main hobby interests are amateur (ham) radio and computers, and I combine the two by helping develop systems to let computers communicate digitally via ham radio.

From 2000 through 2005, I was President of Tucson Amateur Packet Radio (TAPR), which despite its name is a national group dedicated to advancing the digital radio frontier. I'm still on the TAPR board, and am enjoying my free time working on projects like the TADD-1.

My ham radio callsign is N8UR; I previously held calls AG9V, WB9OWI and WN9OWI. Because I'm lucky enough to travel every now and then to Australia, I hold the callsign VK2ISU there. It's a bit frightening, but I've been a ham long enough now to be a member of the Quarter Century Wireless Association (QCWA).

I used to be very interested in photography, but for a number of reasons -- not least of which is the vision condition that's described in Keratoconus and Cornea Transplants -- I gave up on cameras over twenty years ago. Recently, I've become a modestly active photographer and that, coupled with the chance I've had to visit some interesting places as a result of business travel, has led to a few images I've put at John's Photo Gallery.

You can get in touch with me by clicking the "Email" link to the left.