David Miller
David Miller is a software engineer best known for his contributions to Linux. Miller is the maintainer of several Linux subsystems including its networking code.
United States
Dirk Hohndel
Dirk Hohndel is an open source technologist and one of first Linux developers. Hohndel has also advocated for the use and development of open source software as an executive at major technology companies such as Intel and VMware.
Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds invented the Linux operating system which is used to run the vast majority of computer servers connected to the Internet. Torvalds also invented the Git version control system which he uses to manage the source code changes made to Linux by thousands of open source developers.
Jonathan Corbet
Jonathan Corbet is the editor of LWN.net (formerly known as Linux Weekly News) one of the principal online news publications that covers Linux and free software development. Corbet is also a Linux developer and maintainer of the documentation subsystem as well as several device drivers.
Karen Copenhaver
Karen Copenhaver is an intellectual property lawyer best known for her work on open source licensing and business models. Copenhaver is legal counsel to the Linux Foundation where her guidance is used to support the adoption of Linux and open source technologies inside major corporations.
David Miller
David Miller is a software engineer best known for his contributions to Linux. Miller is the maintainer of several Linux subsystems including its networking code.
James Bottomley
James Bottomley is a UK based software engineer and Linux developer. Bottomley maintains Linux’s SCSI subsystem which allows large scale storage devices to work with computers running Linux.
Theodore Ts’o
Theodore Ts’o is a software engineer known for his contributions to Linux and filesystems. Ts’o is also the maintainer of the ext4 filesystem.
Alfred Aho
Alfred Aho contributed to the development of several Unix tools and algorithms while working at Bell Labs. He is the author of egrep, fgrep, and co-author of the AWK programming language.
Dennis Ritchie
Bill and John Ritchie hold a photograph of their late brother Dennis. Dennis Ritchie created the C programming language (perhaps the most widely used programming language of all time) and, with colleague Ken Thompson, the Unix operating system.
Brian Behlendorf
Brian Behlendorf is a technologist and open source evangelist best known for his role as the primary developer of the Apache Web Server. Apache quickly became the most popular web server software on the Internet. Behlendorf also founded the Apache Software Foundation which supports the development of hundreds of open source software projects.
Amanda McPherson
Amanda McPherson is a writer and marketer best known for her work promoting the Linux and open source software. McPherson was the founding marketing executive behind the launch and growth of the Linux Foundation.
Brian Behlendorf
Brian Behlendorf is a technologist and open source evangelist best known for his role as the primary developer of the Apache Web Server. Apache quickly became the most popular web server software on the Internet. Behlendorf also founded the Apache Software Foundation which supports the development of hundreds of open source software projects.
Ted Dolotta
Ted Dolotta contributed to the development of Unix and the Programmers Workbench (PWB) while working at Bell Labs.
Andi Gutmans
Andi Gutmans is an Israeli computer programmer best known for his work on the design and implementation of the PHP programming language. Gutmans was also CEO of Zend Technologies, a company that he co-founded in order to provide commercial support to businesses using PHP.
Bdale Garbee
Bdale Garbee is an open source developer and evangelist best known for his contributions to Debian — an open source operating system and one of the oldest Linux distributions. Garbee is also a long-time advocate of free and open source software.
Bob Fabry
Robert Fabry was a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley who orchestrated funding for the development of the BSD operating system. Fabry secured grants from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) enabling him to create Berkeley’s Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) and formalize the development of BSD.
David Korn
David Korn is the author of the Korn shell (ksh) which he created while working on Unix at Bell Labs. The Korn shell was developed to improve on the features first introduced by the Bourne and C shells.
Jordan Hubbard
Jordan Hubbard is a software developer who co-founded the FreeBSD project which provides a free and open source version of the BSD operating system. Hubbard later worked at Apple, Inc where he was responsible for the use of BSD in the Macintosh and iOS operating systems.
Keith Packard
Keith Packard is a software developer best known for his contributions to the X Windows system. Packard is also a Linux developer and technical advisor to the Debian Project.
Keith Sklower
Keith Sklower is a computer programmer who contributed to the development of BSD while at the University of California, Berkeley. Sklower is also a professional musician playing the oboe and English horn.
Rudd Canaday
Rudd Canaday, along with Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, helped create the initial design of the Unix file system — which allowed multiple users of a shared computer to read, write, and store their own files.
Wietse Venema
Wietse Venema is a computer programmer best known for creating the Postfix mail transfer agent, which routes and delivers e-mail over the Internet. Venema has also made significant contributions to computer security as the author of the TCP Wrapper access control software and as a co-author of the Coroner’s Toolkit and SATAN security tools.
Andi Gutmans
Andi Gutmans is an Israeli computer programmer best known for his work on the design and implementation of the PHP programming language. Gutmans was also CEO of Zend Technologies, a company that he co-founded in order to provide commercial support to businesses using PHP.
Bdale Garbee
Bdale Garbee is an open source developer and evangelist best known for his contributions to Debian — an open source operating system and one of the oldest Linux distributions. Garbee is also a long-time advocate of free and open source software.
Dan Geer
Dan Geer is a computer security analyst and former head of system programming for the Athena Project at MIT in the 1980’s. Geer’s work at MIT contributed to the creation of the X Windows system and the Kerberos authentication protocol — both of which were important in the early history of desktop and distributed computing.
Dan Geer
Dan Geer is a computer security analyst and former head of system programming for the Athena Project at MIT in the 1980’s. Geer’s work at MIT contributed to the creation of the X Windows system and the Kerberos authentication protocol — both of which were important in the early history of desktop and distributed computing.
David S. H. Rosenthal
David Rosenthal is a computer scientist who developed the Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual (ICCCM or I39L) protocol for the X Windows system.
Doug McIlroy
Doug McIlroy was the head of Bell Lab’s Computing Techniques Research Department which created the Unix operating system. McIlroy is widely credited with creating the Unix computing concept known as “pipes” (short for pipelines) which allows users to connect two or more software tools together in order to perform complex computing tasks. McIlroy also authored several of Unix’s core tools such as diff, sort, spell, join, graph, speak, and tr.
Doug McIlroy
Doug McIlroy was the head of Bell Lab’s Computing Techniques Research Department which created the Unix operating system. McIlroy is widely credited with creating the Unix computing concept known as “pipes” (short for pipelines) which allows users to connect two or more software tools together in order to perform complex computing tasks. McIlroy also authored several of Unix’s core tools such as diff, sort, spell, join, graph, speak, and tr.
Eric Raymond
Eric Raymond is a software engineer and the author of the influential essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar. The essay, which detailed the benefits of the open source software development model, was widely cited by early proponents of the open source movement. Raymond was one of the earliest organizers of the open source movement and co-founded the Open Source Initiative (OSI)– a global non-profit organization that works to raise awareness and adoption of open source software.
Eric Allman
Eric Allman is a computer programmer who created the sendmail mail transport agent. The software allowed for the delivery of email to computers connected to the Internet and quickly became the de facto standard on Unix-like systems. Allman also created syslog which became the standard logging solution for applications running under Unix-like systems.
Guido van Rossum
Guido van Rossum is the creator of the Python programming language. Van Rossum holds the title of “Benevolent Dictator for Life” within the Python community which uses a collaborative open source development model to create new versions of the programming language.
Jim Gettys
Jim Gettys is a computer programmer and one of the original developers of the X Window system. He is also the editor of the HTTP/1.1 communications protocol specification which is most commonly used to browse the World Wide Web.
John Mashey
John Mashey contributed to the development of Unix and the Programmers Workbench (PWB) while working at Bell Labs.
John Ousterhout
John Ousterhout is a professor of computer science at Stanford University and the designer of the TcL programming language and the Tk toolkit. The TcL language allows developers using Unix-like systems to rapidly build software programs that have graphical user interfaces. A long-time sufferer of repetitive strain injury, Ousterhaut uses speech-to-text dictation software instead of keyboard typing for the majority of his computer work, including programming.
Jordan Hubbard
Jordan Hubbard is a software developer who co-founded the FreeBSD project which provides a free and open source version of the BSD operating system. Hubbard later worked at Apple, Inc where he was responsible for the use of BSD in the Macintosh and iOS operating systems.
Keith Bostic
Keith Bostic is a software engineer best known for his contributions to the design and implementation of BSD while at the University of California, Berkeley. Bostic is also the creator of nvi, a re-implementation of the vi text editor, and a co-creator of the open source Berkeley DB database.
Keith Packard
Keith Packard is a software developer best known for his contributions to the X Windows system. Packard is also a Linux developer and technical advisor to the Debian Project.
Keith Sklower
Keith Sklower is a computer programmer who contributed to the development of BSD while at the University of California, Berkeley. Sklower is also a professional musician playing the oboe and English horn.
Marshall Kirk McKusick
Marshall Kirk McKusick is a computer scientist best known for leading the development of the BSD operating system. McKusick is a long-time advocate for open source software and a former President of the USENIX association which supports the study and development of Unix-like systems.
Michael Lesk
Michael Lesk is the author of several core Unix tools including uucp, tbl, and lex — a generator for lexical analyzers. He is also the author of the Lesk algorithm which is used in computational linguistics to determine the proper meaning of ambiguous words.
Michael Lesk
Michael Lesk is the author of several core Unix tools including uucp, tbl, and lex — a generator for lexical analyzers. He is also the author of the Lesk algorithm which is used in computational linguistics to determine the proper meaning of ambiguous words.
Paul Vixie
Paul Vixie is a computer scientist and programmer best known for his extensive contributions to the Internet Domain Name System (DNS) and its underlying software: BIND. Vixie is also the author of several Unix software programs including SENDS, proxynet, rtty and Vixie cron.
Peter Mattis
Peter Mattis co-created the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) — a widely used open source image editing software program. Mattis, along with Spencer Kimball, first developed GIMP while attending the University of California, Berkeley in the mid 1990’s.
Peter Mattis
Peter Mattis co-created the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) — a widely used open source image editing software program. Mattis, along with Spencer Kimball, first developed GIMP while attending the University of California, Berkeley in the mid 1990’s.
Peter Weinberger
Peter Weinberger co-authored the awk programming language and other Unix tools while working at Bell Labs.
Rudd Canaday
Rudd Canaday, along with Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, helped create the initial design of the Unix file system — which allowed multiple users of a shared computer to read, write, and store their own files.
Sandy Fraser
Sandy Fraser authored several Unix programs including nfs, bfs, cdl, and the Unix Circuit Design System (UCDS) while working at Bell Labs.
Spencer Kimball
Spencer Kimball co-created the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) — a widely used open source image editing software program. Kimball, along with Peter Mattis, first developed GIMP while attending the University of California, Berkeley in the mid 1990’s.