The UK organisation for the business of Open Technology

Andrew is a consultant at Bristows LLP in London, and is CEO of Orcro Limited, a compliance business specialising in risk management around software supply chain management, with particular emphasis on open source software. Formerly a software developer, Andrew qualified as a barrister in 1990 and subsequently requalified as a solicitor. He is Irish and British.

He has advised companies worldwide, including global multinationals, on issues relating to open source software and software supply chain compliance. Orcro is a partner of the Linux Foundation’s OpenChain compliance programme, and Andrew is heavily involved in the development of OpenChain’s processes and materials, including the OpenChain specification (ISO 5230:2020). Andrew also has an interest in open hardware, having drafted the popular Solderpad Open Hardware licence, and he is also on the core drafting team of the CERN Open Hardware Licence. He was a co-author of the major European Commission Impact Study on Open Source Software and Hardware published in 2021, and led the open hardware section of the study.

Andrew has been a board member of several industry and open bodies, including the Telecommunications Industry Association, Public Software CIC and the MariaDB Foundation.

He is a visiting researcher at the University of Skövde in Sweden where he has published a number of papers, and his work includes a collaboration on the definition of open standards which has been adopted as public policy by the Swedish Government. He is a Fellow of Open Forum Academy and has sat on the IP Advisory board of the UN’s Technology Innovation Lab project. His work has been published by the OUP and EUP among others. He spoken at conferences worldwide, in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Far East.