Michael J. Karels (August 2, 1956 – June 2, 2024) was an American software engineer and one of the key figures in history of

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...

UNIX Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

Biography

Karels graduated from the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac (known simply as Notre Dame; ; ND) is a Private university, private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, United States. Founded in 1842 by members of the Congregation of Holy Cross, a Cathol ...

with a degree in

microbiology Microbiology () is the branches of science, scientific study of microorganisms, those being of unicellular organism, unicellular (single-celled), multicellular organism, multicellular (consisting of complex cells), or non-cellular life, acellula ...

and from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

with a graduate degree. In 1993, the

USENIX USENIX is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization based in Berkeley, California and founded in 1975 that supports advanced computing systems, operating system (OS), and computer networking research. It organizes several confe ...

Association gave a Lifetime Achievement Award (''Flame'') to the

Computer Systems Research Group The Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) was a research group at the University of California, Berkeley, that was dedicated to enhancing AT&T Unix operating system and funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. History Profes ...

, honoring 180 individuals, including Karels, who contributed to the CSRG's 4.4BSD-Lite release. His face appears on the 7 of Spades on the USENIX 1994 Playing Card Deck. In February 1992 Karels moved to BSDI (

Berkeley Software Design Berkeley Software Design, Inc. (BSDI or, later, BSDi), was a software company founded in 1991 by members of the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG), known for developing and selling BSD/OS (originally known as BSD/386), a commercial and part ...

) and designed BSD/OS, which, for years, was the only commercially available BSD style Unix on Intel platform. BSDi's software assets were bought by Wind River in April 2001, and Karels joined Wind River as the Principal Technologist for the BSD/OS platform. Following his time at Wind River, Karels joined

Secure Computing Corporation Secure Computing Corporation (SCC) was a public company that developed and sold computer security appliances and hosted services to protect users and data. McAfee acquired the company in 2008. The company also developed filtering systems used b ...

in 2003 as a Sr. Principal Engineer. Secure Computing used BSD/OS as the basis for SecureOS, the operating system of its Sidewinder firewall, later known as McAfee Firewall Enterprise. However, BSD/OS development had ceased, so Karels was involved in transitioning SecureOS to use

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

as its base, and porting its unique features over to the new kernel. Secure Computing and the Sidewinder firewall team went through a series of acquisitions and spinoffs, including

McAfee McAfee Corp. ( ), formerly known as McAfee Associates, Inc. from 1987 to 1997 and 2004 to 2014, Network Associates Inc. from 1997 to 2004, and Intel Security Group from 2014 to 2017, is an American proprietary software company focused on online ...

, Intel, and Forcepoint, so while Karels appeared to have several different jobs from that point onward, he had remained in roughly the same role from 2003 until his retirement in 2021. The Sidewinder product was eventually discontinued, though Karels fed some SecureOS changes back into the main FreeBSD codebase. Karels officially became a FreeBSD committer in 2017. He continued working on FreeBSD in his spare time following retirement. Karels died in

Ottawa Ottawa is the capital city of Canada. It is located in the southern Ontario, southern portion of the province of Ontario, at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the cor ...

on June 2, 2024, at the age of 67.

Bibliography

* S. Leffler, M. McKusick, M. Karels, J. Quarterman: ''The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System'', Addison-Wesley, January 1989, . German translation published June 1990, . Japanese translation published June 1991, (out of print). * S. Leffler, M. McKusick: ''The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System Answer Book'', Addison-Wesley, April 1991, . Japanese translation published January 1992, * M. McKusick, K. Bostic, M. Karels, J. Quarterman: ''The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System'', Addison-Wesley, April 1996, . French translation published 1997, International Thomson Publishing, Paris, France, . *

References

External links

Mike Karels at Unix Guru Universe's Unix Contributors

Mike Karels Linkedin Page
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Karels, Michael J. 1956 births 2024 deaths American computer programmers American computer scientists BSD people