Moorcroft’s Head of Technology and IP and CEO of Orcro, Andrew Katz has been named on OpenUK’s 2023 New Year’s Honours List.

The New Year’s Honours List is a British tradition, marking the achievement of extraordinary people in the UK. OpenUK has now shared three such lists to celebrate the achievements of the UK Open Technology Communities. This year, OpenUK partnered with Onalytica to use its algorithm technology to identify the 100 top UK open source influencers and are now honouring them as part of its 2023 Honours List. 

Andrew is one of the UK’s leading free and open source software lawyers, is a Fellow of the Free Software Foundation Europe and a Fellow of the Open Forum Academy,  has been a visiting lecturer on Free and Open Source Software at Queen Mary, University of London and is currently a visiting researcher at the University of Skövde, Sweden where he has co-authored a number of papers, mainly on the interrelationship between standards and open source software. One of the papers has formed part of the Swedish government’s procurement policy.

He regularly advises companies worldwide, including global multinationals, on issues relating to open source software and software supply chain compliance. Both Moorcrofts and Orcro are partners of the Linux Foundation’s OpenChain compliance programme, and Andrew is heavily involved in the development of the OpenChain specification: ISO/IEC 5230:2020 processes and materials. He sits on the core drafting team of the CERN Open Hardware Licence. He led the Open Hardware section of the European Commission’s published report on Open Source Software and Hardware in the European Union.

Commenting on the listing, Andrew, said:

“I’m delighted and honoured to have been listed by OpenUK as one of the top 100 influencers in Open Technology in the UK and named alongside so many fantastic professionals who are undertaking great work in the world of open source and hardware. This is an exciting time to be involved in the open source community and especially the emerging and increasingly important area of open hardware. Well done to all those listed and to OpenUK for recognising and acknowledging these efforts”.

The OpenUK 2023 Honours List, recognising the top 100 leaders in Open Technology can be accessed on the OpenUK’s website.