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Jon Hall | |
|---|---|
 Hall in 2015 | |
| Born | August 7, 1950 |
| Other names | maddog |
| Education | Master of Science, Computer Science; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1977 Bachelor of Science, Commerce and Engineering; Drexel University, 1973 |
| Employer | Linux Professional Institute |
| Title | Board Chair |
Jon "maddog" Hall (born 7 August 1950) is the board chair for the Linux Professional Institute.
Hall helped his father assemble toys at a toy store, and had three years of high school electronics shop. [1]
The nickname "maddog" was given to him by his students at Hartford State Technical College, where he was the Department Head of Computer Science. He now prefers to be called by this name. According to Hall, his nickname "came from a time when I had less control over my temper". [2]
He has worked for Western Electric Corporation, Aetna Life and Casualty, [3] Bell Laboratories, Digital Equipment Corporation (Digital), VA Linux Systems, and Silicon Graphics (SGI). He was the CTO and ambassador of the now defunct computer appliance company Koolu. [4]
It was during his time with Digital that he initially became interested in Linux and was instrumental in obtaining equipment and resources for Linus Torvalds to accomplish his first port, to Digital's Alpha platform. It was also in this general timeframe that Hall, who lives in New Hampshire, started the Greater New Hampshire Linux Users' Group. Hall has UNIX as his New Hampshire vanity license plate. [5]
Hall serves or has served on the boards of several companies, and several non-profit organizations, including the USENIX Association. Hall has spoken about Linux and free software at the technology conference Campus Party many times since 2007. [6]
Hall holds a Master of Science in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1977) and a Bachelor of Science in Commerce and Engineering from Drexel University (1973).
In September 2015, Hall joined the board of The Linux Professional Institute, as chairman of the board. [7]
He is the co-founder of Brazilian Internet of things and Single-board computer project called Caninos Loucos based on University of São Paulo. [8] [9] [10]
Hall has used his experience and name recognition to promote a variety of causes, generally involving open-source hardware or software in some fashion. In 2011 Hall gave talks and served on the planning committee for the leadership track of POSSCON in Columbia South Carolina.
Hall is the president and evangelist for Project Cauã, which he describes as "a project to help create millions of sustainable, private sector, entrepreneurial jobs in dense urban areas in Latin America". [11] The project is based around an open hardware and software design for small, low power computers which will be the basis for small scale but widespread entrepreneurs using this platform to bring networking and entertainment to urban areas.
In 2013, Hall came on board as an advocate for the ARM 64-bit porting project being run by the Linaro group. [12] [13] The objective is to port a collection of Linux open-source libraries to the 64-bit ARM architecture (ARMv8). [14]
In January 2022, Hall gave testimony in a New Hampshire subcommittee for the use of free and open source software for government use.
In June 2012, the day after Alan Turing's birthday, Hall published an article in Linux Magazine announcing that he is gay. [15] He is the godfather to Linus Torvalds' children. [16]
Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie was an American computer scientist. He is best known for creating the C programming language and, with long-time colleague Ken Thompson, the Unix operating system and B programming language. Ritchie and Thompson were awarded the Turing Award from the ACM in 1983, the Hamming Medal from the IEEE in 1990 and the National Medal of Technology from President Bill Clinton in 1999. Ritchie was the head of Lucent Technologies System Software Research Department when he retired in 2007. He was the "R" in K&R C, and commonly known by his username dmr.
Eric Steven Raymond, often referred to as ESR, is an American software developer, open-source software advocate, and author of the 1997 essay and 1999 book The Cathedral and the Bazaar. He wrote a guidebook for the Roguelike game NetHack. In the 1990s, he edited and updated the Jargon File, published as The New Hacker's Dictionary.
Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish-American software engineer who is the creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel, used by Linux distributions like Debian, Arch and Android. He also created the distributed version control system Git.
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Revolution OS is a 2001 documentary film that traces the twenty-year history of GNU, Linux, open source, and the free software movement.
The GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaboratively developing and publishing software that gives everyone the rights to freely run the software, copy and distribute it, study it, and modify it. GNU software grants these rights in its license.
The Linux Mark Institute is an organization which administers the "Linux" trademark on behalf of Linus Torvalds for computer software which includes the Linux kernel, computer hardware utilizing Linux-based software, and for services associated with the implementation and documentation of Linux-based products.
The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (AdTI) was a Washington, D.C. based think tank.
Richard Matthew Stallman, also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to use, study, distribute, and modify that software. Software that ensures these freedoms is termed free software. Stallman launched the GNU Project, founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in October 1985, developed the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Emacs, and wrote all versions of the GNU General Public License.
Tivoization is the practice of designing hardware that incorporates software under the terms of a copyleft software license like the GNU General Public License, but uses hardware restrictions or digital rights management (DRM) to prevent users from running modified versions of the software on that hardware. Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) coined the term in reference to TiVo's use of GNU GPL licensed software on the TiVo brand digital video recorders (DVR), which actively block modified software by design. Stallman believes this practice denies users some of the freedom that the GNU GPL was designed to protect. The FSF refers to tivoized hardware as "proprietary tyrants".
The Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate was a written debate between Andrew S. Tanenbaum and Linus Torvalds, regarding the Linux kernel and kernel architecture in general. Tanenbaum, the creator of Minix, began the debate in 1992 on the Usenet discussion group comp.os.minix, arguing that microkernels are superior to monolithic kernels and therefore Linux was, even in 1992, obsolete. The debate has sometimes been considered a flame war.
Linux is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution (distro), which includes the kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses and recommends the name "GNU/Linux" to emphasize the use and importance of GNU software in many distributions, causing some controversy.
The Code is an English-language Finnish documentary about Linux from 2001, featuring some of the most influential people of the free software movement.
The criticism of Linux focuses on issues concerning use of operating systems which use the Linux kernel.
In the 1950s and 1960s, computer operating software and compilers were delivered as a part of hardware purchases without separate fees. At the time, source code, the human-readable form of software, was generally distributed with the software providing the ability to fix bugs or add new functions. Universities were early adopters of computing technology. Many of the modifications developed by universities were openly shared, in keeping with the academic principles of sharing knowledge, and organizations sprung up to facilitate sharing. As large-scale operating systems matured, fewer organizations allowed modifications to the operating software, and eventually such operating systems were closed to modification. However, utilities and other added-function applications are still shared and new organizations have been formed to promote the sharing of software.
Koolu was a Canadian company started by Andrew Greig and Jon "maddog" Hall, which aim is to provide low-power computer appliances powered by free- and open-source software. It is now defunct.
Linux began in 1991 as a personal project by Finnish student Linus Torvalds to create a new free operating system kernel. The resulting Linux kernel has been marked by constant growth throughout its history. Since the initial release of its source code in 1991, it has grown from a small number of C files under a license prohibiting commercial distribution to the 4.15 version in 2018 with more than 23.3 million lines of source code, not counting comments, under the GNU General Public License v2 with a syscall exception meaning anything that uses the kernel via system calls are not subject to the GNU GPL.
The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally written in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU operating system, which was written to be a free (libre) replacement for Unix.
Criticism of desktop Linux is a history of comment on the perceived shortcomings of the Linux operating system when installed on desktop computers. These criticisms have been aimed at the plethora of issues and lack of consistency between Linux distributions, their usefulness and ease of use as desktop systems for general end users, driver support and issues with multi-media playback and audio development.
Mark Bolzern is one of the original pioneers of both the Internet, and of the Linux computer operating system. Bolzern was the founder of early Linux-specific community portals such as LinuxNews, LinuxMall, LinuxPro, LinuxGuru and PenguinPower. Bolzern was also the creator of the original plush Tux mascot, based on the original drawing by Larry Ewing. His work at LinuxMall allowed Bolzern to directly affect the Linux community with LinuxMall's support of various Linux events. His achievements play a significant role in the story of the book Rebel Code by author Glyn Moody
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