Limor Fried, aka ladyada,[1] is an American electrical engineer and owner of the electronics hobbyist company, Adafruit Industries. She is influential in the open-source hardware scene, having participated in the first Open Source Hardware Summit and the drafting of the Open Source Hardware definition.
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Fried received her Masters in Engineering from MIT. She is the founder of Adafruit Industries, as well as the engineer behind the electronic kits sold by the company.
In 2009, she was awarded the Pioneer Award by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for her participation in the open source hardware and software community.[2]
In 2011, Fried was awarded the Most Influential Women in Technology award by Fast Company[3].
After Microsoft launched the Kinect for Xbox 360, Fried, along with Phillip Torrone, organized a $2,000 challenge[4] for open source Kinect drivers. After Microsoft condemned the challenge as modification to their product, Adafruit increased the prize to $3,000[5].
Microsoft does not condone the modification of its products ... With Kinect, Microsoft built in numerous hardware and software safeguards designed to reduce the chances of product tampering. Microsoft will continue to make advances in these types of safeguards and work closely with law enforcement and product safety groups to keep Kinect tamper-resistant."[6]
After significant advancements in the open source drivers, spokespeople from Microsoft stated that they did not condemn the challenge, and in fact were excited to see what the community developed[7].