VA Linux is proud to be home to some of the best & brightest in the Linux Community. Here's a list of some of our Geeks who have made a splash in the Linux world.
Browse all the pictures here or download the newer 4 page PDF
Jeremy Allison
Samba Team/Professional Services
Jeremy Allison is probably best known for having co-authored Samba, but he has an impressive list of credits to add to that. Among other things, Jeremy has worked on such projects as Cygwin32, gcc and libc, FreeBSD, NT Seclib, pwdump and Lesstif. Jeremy studied Physics and Astronomy at the University of Sheffield, but sadly his PhD is not written up. Jeremy also cites an education in the "School of Hard Knocks." Jeremy also holds a position on the Board of Advisors for Linux Magazine.
Bruce O. Benson
Senior Electrical Engineer
Where John Casu focuses on the software aspects, Bruce is the hardware taskmaster of the CSCG. Besides being responsible for our latest 148 node cluster, Bruce runs the Custom Engineering Group. Since graduating from Old Dominion University, Bruce has held positions at I-Net, Sparta, and Wyle Labs prior to coming to VA Linux, and has shown a consistent tenacity when working on a project. Other interests include embedded systems, security/encryption, and the occasional dabbling in HAM radio. Bruce also holds the title of Co-Chair, NovaLUG Security SIG.
Lisa 'Flygirl' Corsetti
Senior Web Software Goddess and Director of E-Commerce
Although a hardware engineer by training, Lisa has spent almost all
of her working career as a software engineer. While working on embedded
systems projects, Lisa became interested in the Unix world after being
exposed to QNX. She has since become an outspoken fan of Linux and enjoys
"spreading the word". Lisa is also an enthusiastic aviator who has been flying
since age 19. Flying and skiing are (respectively) her second and third
favorite activities.
Chris DiBona
Linux Evangelist
Chris DiBona has been using Linux since early 1995. In addition to being the Linux International web master and grant chair, he is VA Linux' Community Evangelist and is President of the Silicon Valley Linux Users Group. When it comes to writing, he sold his first article at 17 and has written for TechWeek, The Vienna Times, Linux Journal and for two years was the editor of the Terrorist Profile Weekly.
He was the co-editor of the O'Reilly book "Open Sources - Voices from the Open Source Software Revolution) and is working on another book from O'Reilly due to be released Early next year.
His current development project (Developed under the code name LookOut) is
next generation information client.
Walt Drummond
Director of Software Engineering
Walt came to us from SGI, were he worked in the Network Engineering Group on Naming Services. He also did research on Linux-based clusters and appliance-style servers. Walt is now part of the IA-64 Development Team and working on the Linux Kernel, concentrating hardware/platform specific details, SMP and firmware support.
Brian Elliott Finley
Sr. Systems Engineer
Prior to coming to VA Linux, Brian worked for himself as an independent consultant. He has been working in the computer industry since 1990, specializing in operating systems, system architecture, and system integration. In 1993 he found Linux and fell in love.
He is very active in the Dallas/Fort Worth Linux Users Group, and recently served a year as President. In his spare time he likes to work on software projects. He is the author of SystemImager http://systemimager.sourceforge.net/, and is currently in the process of writing a Linux related book for Addison-Wesley.
John Goebel
Cluster Application Developer
John Goebel graduated from Washington College with a degree in sculpture, and one class short of a minor in analytic philosophy. He started working with computers in the evenings creating animations and illustrations for games for Broderbund Software. For seven years he worked as a motorcycle courier in Washington D.C. on a vintage Ducati - a 1975 860 GT. His first UNIX was Irix; his first Linux distribution was Slackware. He worked at the American Association of Retired Persons as their Webmaster for three years. Now he is in the Cluster and Scientific Computing group (CSCG) at VA Linux Systems. He lives in Santa Cruz with his wife Christina, and his Leonberger dog Tonka.
Tony 'fusion94' Guntharp
Sourceforge Project Manager
Prior to joining VA Linux Systems, Tony helped to found Fresher Information Corp, a San Francisco startup. While there Tony designed and architected their USENET search engine. Tony has over 9 years of experience leading projects in systems engineering and integration, particularly in the design and implementation of Internet applications. Most recently, he acted as Systems Architect/Software Engineer at healthshop.com, an e-commerce startup focused on natural health products. He has repeatedly launched the information technology infrastructure of startups while at A3 Ventures, planet U, and at NTT's Multimedia Communications Labs.
Carsten 'Raster' Haitzler
Senior Software Engineer
Raster comes to us from Australia, where he earned his Bachelor of Computer Science degree from the University of New South Wales. Having begun his computer career on an Amiga500, and later turned to Linux as the OS of choice, he can now lay claim to having authored (and co-authored) many of the more well-known Linux projects. You will see his name linked with Enlightenment and related programs, Electric Eyes, several GNOME projects, Fnlib, Imlib, Window Maker, E-Term, Esound, Efm (Enlightenment file manager), and Xscreensaver, as well as contributions to the XFree86 and GTK code.
Joey Hess
Engineer
Joey Hess has been a Debian Linux
developer since 1996, and continues to work on
Debian at VA Linux Systems. His most well known project is Alien, the Linux
package format converter. Joey is one of the most active
Debian developers
and he maintains upwards of some seventy individual software packages
for Debian. He is
well known by other developers as the author of debhelper, a tool which
is used to build most of Debian. He is
now working on debconf, a Debian
configuration system that aims to revolutionize
Debian installation and
upgrades. Joey enjoys the meditative aspects of playing Tetris and
flying kites.
Michael Jennings
Software Engineer
Michael's first computer was a 486/33, but his introduction to Linux came later, when he found himself working on Linux workstations at The Auto Channel. Since that time, he has become best known for having authored the most impressive terminal program ever: E-Term. Listed among his other projects are Enlightenment, imlib, The Not Game, and the Enlightenment Epplets. At VA Linux, he has co-authored the VA Cluster Manager (VACM).
Greg Kucharo
Engineer
Greg Kucharo is a 10 year industry veteran. He has worked in tech
support, programming, testing and manufacturing of computers for the
likes of IBM, Hitachi, Apple and now VA
Linux Systems. A graduate of the University of Iowa, he cut his
programming teeth on the school's Apollo workstations and spent entirely
too much time playing MUD's. He has contributed to two up coming books
on Linux and is the former publicity director of the Silicon Valley
Linux User's Group . He is married and lives in Silicon
Valley. When Linux World Domination(TM) is complete, he will retire to
someplace far away.
Meg 'Maven' Lauber
Web Design Goddess, Resident Black-coat
Meg has been with VA Linux for 2 years now, and an avid Linux user for about 3 years. She started out her Silicon Valley career in System Administration at a local ISP, and moved on to become firmly entrenched in the halls of VA Linux. She has the distinction of being the first female at VA Linux in a technical role. She has been known as the Tech Support Maven, and more recently has been inducted into the Web Goddess Clan.
San 'Nettwerk' Mehat
Engineer
San Mehat has covered a lot of ground in a short period of time. San
wrote the first Linux in a PC BIOS and the first artificially
intelligent network scanner. San is one of the most prominent names
with respect to hardware/software interfaces for Linux. San is an
expert on embedded Linux, and prior to working at VA Linux, was the Chief
Architect of the Corel Netwinder. Recent accomplishments includes
authoring the VA Linux Reliance Desktop, and being the driving force behind
the VA Cluster Manager (VACM, pronounced 'Vacuum'); if you ever conceive
of using real server management for the Linux platform, someone like San
is indispensable. San has previously worked for companies like Corel
and Nortel. He is the author and maintainer of the TCP/IP drinking
game, and likes to DJ when he can (mostly in the lab area where he and
his DJ equipment reside along with the Enlightenment/Eterm team).
Marc "The Crazy Frenchman" Merlin
Engineering/Linux IA/64 Sysadmin
Marc, or The Crazy Frenchman (as we like to call him), is one of our more colorful UberGeeks. He got his Masters from EFREI, in Paris, spent a semester at USC (Los Angeles) and spent 3 months in Japan, in Hakodate. He hold the position of Vice President of the Silicon Valley Linux Users Group, as well as Linux Freak and Linux Reporter Emeritus. Among his many project credits is the duplicate IP and Mac address Linux kernel patch, bugfixes for Debian Linux, as well as Midnight Commander, XGmod and Watchdog.
Sean 'Shaleh' Perry
Debian Hacker
Drew Streib is the systems administrator for Linux International, a data architect for VA Linux, and a lead developer for SourceForge, the hosting resource for Open Software developers. He works mostly in PHP, Perl and C, concentrating on web-based applications. Drew also assisted in the development of VA Linux' e-Commerce site. Look for his name in the upcoming book, Practical Linux published by Macmillan Publishing.
Ted Ts'o
Principal Engineer
Ted Ts'o has a long involvement with Linux; he has been a kernel developer since version 0.10 and is the author of the Ext2 filesystem. Anyone running Linux is using code that Ted wrote. He is one of the world's leading minds with respect to Kerberos security and one of the TSX/11 maintainers. Among other things, he is also noted for his work on the serial port/tty layer, POSIX job control, and the /dev/random entropy driver. He is an MIT graduate and still maintains residence in Boston. Ted also holds the title of Chair of the Linux International Technical Board.
Amy Turner
Website Producer, and Senior Web Design Goddess
Amy has been designing web sites professionally since 1995 and using Linux since 1996. She came to VA Linux from EDS's c2o organization where she created an automated web help-desk system that ran six EDS IT accounts and is still in use today. She is still absolutely shocked that making web pages is something she gets paid for and not just another way to goof off on her computers. Amy lives in Mountain View with her husband, Michael, her cat, 3 snakes, 2 lizards, and a bunch of computers. She enjoys being the Web Design Officer for the Silicon Valley Linux Users Group.
Uriah Welcome
Systems Engineer
Uriah has been using computers since 1992 and Linux since 1995. He came to VA Linux from the frosty regions of Minnesota where is was a Linux/Unix Consultant. At VA Linux he is the Systems Engineer behind SourceForge, an online Open Source Hosting System. He mostly works in PHP, Perl, and Shell Scripting on the backend of things.
Leonard N. Zubkoff
Chief Technology Officer
Zubkoff has been an active member of the Linux development community since 1994, and joined VA Linux in July 1998 as Chief Technical Officer (CTO). Prior to joining VA Linux, Zubkoff was principal member of the technical staff at Oracle Corporation where by day he built instruction level performance monitoring and analysis tools, and by night he was a Linux kernel developer. Zubkoff was principal scientist at Lucid where he designed and implemented the ports of Lucid Common Lisp to the Apollo PRISM and IBM POWER architectures.
He has authored numerous patches and bug fixes all over the kernel, wrote the driver for BusLogic SCSI host adapters, acted as maintainer of the SCSI subsystem for several years, contributed to the stability of the SMP implementation for 4 & 8 processor systems, and even wrote an ethernet driver in his spare time. He holds a Master of Science in Computer Science from Carnegie-Mellon University and a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Rochester. Zubkoff serves on the Linux International Technical Board.
Drew Streib