The Foundational Ted Ts'o

Ted Ts'o is not widely known outside hacker circles, and yet he has played an important role in the development of Linux right from the start. He was using it from version 0.02 or 0.03 of the kernel, and contributed code to 0.10; he also set up the first site in the US that carried Linux and related software. Since then:

Ts'o is also a Linux filesystem maintainer, a role in which he maintains several packages including e2fsprogs. He currently serves on the board of USENIX, is the founder and chair of the annual Linux Kernel Developers' Summit and regularly teaches tutorials on Linux and other open source software. Ts'o was project leader for Kerberos, a network authentication system used by Red Hat Enteprise Linux, SUSE Enterprise Linux and Microsoft Windows. He was also a member of Security Area Directorate for the Internet Engineering Task Force where he chaired the IP Security (ipsec) Working Group and was a founding board member of the Free Standards Group (FSG).

That's from the Linux Foundation press release announcing that Ts'o would be joining that organisation as "chief platform strategist" during a two-year fellowship, before returning to IBM, his current employer.

Given the key roles he played in the early days, it's good to see him getting some recognition in this way. It's also a reflection of the growing maturity of the Linux ecosystem that such roles as "chief platform strategist" exist at all.