The 40 Fires Foundation is a not-for-profit company that has been set up by Riversimple LLP to host the Hyrban project. The site is also available to host other open hardware projects. If you have a project and are interested in having it hosted by 40 Fires, please contact us.

The Foundation is a separate legal entity and has three trustees, Adam Brett, Anthony Dawton and Hugo Spowers. Hugo leads the Riversimple project; the other two trustees are independent.

The funding for the Foundation is currently provided by Riversimple but the intention is that the Foundation will be self-supporting in the medium and long-term.

A small team of people are responsible for running 40 Fires including Patrick Andrews, Nicolas Sergent, William Cornwallis and Christian Ahlert. Roland Whitehead has created the site and helps us operate it.

This wiki site is the main engine for the dissemination of information on projects.

The first project hosted by 40 Fires is design of the Hyrban, an urban vehicle powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. The vehicle has been designed with energy efficiency as the primary goal, while still meeting safety, reliability and performance standards. The starting point for the Hyrban is the designs which have been contributed to 40 Fires by Riversimple LLP. These will be made available on this site over the next few months. Riversimple has already built a technology demonstrator based on these designs and is working towards a production prototype.

Entrepreneurs around the world will be able to download drawings and data from this site to enable them to develop and build their own versions of this highly energy-efficient vehicle for their local market. This significantly lowers the barriers to entry to the market, allowing rapid deployment of the vehicles we urgently need to reduce the carbon emissions from personal mobility. We are still debating whether manufacturers should pay a fee or not to 40 Fires (see the licesning discussion below). This would be designed to cover 40 Fires running costs. However, community members have pointed out that this is contrary to the spirit of open source.

Licensing As in all open collaborative projects, the licensing structure is vitally important. We have launched a discussion on the discussion forum to discuss the most suitable license structure under which 40 Fires will make its designs available. A document outlining some of the issues, produced in April 2010, is available for view here. Further notes can be read here.