Facebook Loses Its Open-Source-Hardware Chief To The Startup Life

Facebook’s open-source-hardware champion, Frank Frankovsky, has left the building. In a personal Facebook post, Frankovsky, who headed up the ambitious Open Compute Project and ran Facebook’s own hardware design, announced that he’s leaving to start his own company.

“It’s time for me to move on to new challenges,” Frankovsky wrote. “I am planning to work on a new open-source hardware business focused on developing and delivering optical technology for capacity-optimized storage needs.” The full goodbye note is included at the end of this post.

Frankovsky is not only one of the smartest, coolest folks we’ve interviewed during the course of Facebook’s spearheading of open-source hardware and the Open Compute Project. He’s also an amazingly nice guy. Kind. Funny. The kind of person you want to see succeed...