IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2014 - 28

particular open-source license he applied-
Creative Commons CC BY-ND-requires
more than just proper attribution: It forbids
derivative works. This is different from most
open-source projects, which are released with
the intent of letting others build on the original,
perhaps improving things and, in any event,
ensuring that useful designs will not languish
if the creator goes bankrupt, loses interest, or
otherwise moves on.
This wasn't a problem while NwAvGuy
remained engaged with the people building
his designs, which grew to include a digitalto-analog audio converter board. He designed
the converter in collaboration with George
Boudreau, who runs Toronto-based Yoyodyne
Consulting. NwAvGuy kept his identity secret
even from Boudreau, who has some guesses
as to why: "He said he had received e-mail
threats." Boudreau also speculates that
NwAvGuy might not have wanted an employer
to know about his moonlighting.
But in July 2012, NwAvGuy went silent.
E-mails weren't returned, and blog posting
ceased. "He had gone quiet before-for a
28

MAr 2014

NorTH AMerIcAN

month or so," says Boudreau. But no one has
heard a peep from NwAvGuy in more than a
year and a half.
It was always NwAvGuy's prerogative
to stop blogging or giving advice. But
his mysterious disappearance created a
predicament when the power jack used in
the O2 amplifier went out of production.
Equivalent replacements remain easy
to source, but they don't fit the holes in
NwAvGuy's original printed circuit board.
"He made it so you could see it, but not
touch it," says Seaber. That is, while Seaber
and others had the files they needed to have
printed-circuit boards made, no one but
NwAvGuy had the original layout file, which
would allow easy changes. So even after
Seaber had wrestled with the thorny ethical
and legal issue of whether to modify the
board-which he decided was okay in this
case because it didn't violate NwAvGuy's
fundamental intent-he had to figure out how
to make the changes. Fortunately, the only
thing needed was to increase the diameter
of three holes, which with a little sleuthing

sPecTruM.Ieee.orG

through one of the manufacturing-control files
Seaber was able to do.
Why didn't NwAvGuy allow derivative works?
"NwAvGuy was ripping manufacturers apart
left and right," says Seaber. "He didn't want
to see tweaked versions of his designs" that
didn't perform well. Reasonable enough. But
it's unclear what will ultimately become of this
immensely successful open-source project
if nobody else can become its steward in
NwAvGuy's absence.
The bigger question: Has NwAvGuy stopped
communicating with others for reasons of his
own, or could he have been hit by a bus, as they
say? One hint comes from the fact that the
domain name registration for NwAvGuy.com
was renewed in March 2013, eight months
after he stopped communicating, which
suggests he didn't suffer some terrible
accident or illness. If the mystery engineer
is alive and well, he'll presumably renew his
domain again this March as well. Or perhaps
that's too much of an assumption to make
about this Scarlet Pimpernel of the DIY-audio
world. -DavID SChneIDer

clockwise from top left: epiphany acoustics; Jds laBs (3)

SounD reaSonInG: Buy a finished headphone amp or
make one yourself using nwavGuy's design, which uses
through-hole components for easy soldering. unfortunately, enlarging three holes for the power jack technically ran afoul of nwavGuy's no-derivatives license.

http://www.NwAvGuy.com http://sPecTruM.Ieee.orG

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2014