Bryan M. Cantrill (born 1973) is an American

software engineer Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term ''p ...

who worked at

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, t ...

and later at

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...

following its acquisition of Sun. He left Oracle on July 25, 2010 to become the Vice President of Engineering at

Joyent Joyent Inc. was a software and services company based in San Francisco, California. Specializing in cloud computing, it marketed infrastructure-as-a-service. On June 15, 2016, the company was acquired by Samsung Electronics. Services Triton, Joye ...

, transitioning to Chief Technology Officer at

in April 2014, until his departure on July 31 of 2019. He is now the CTO of Oxide Computer company.

Professional life

Cantrill was born in Vermont, later moving to Colorado, where he attained the rank of

Eagle Scout Eagle Scout is the highest achievement or rank attainable in the Scouts BSA program of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). Since its inception in 1911, only four percent of Scouts have earned this rank after a lengthy review process. The Eagle Sc ...

. He studied

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

at Brown University, spending two summers at QNX Software Systems doing kernel development. Upon completing his B.Sc. in 1996, he immediately joined Sun Microsystems to work with Jeff Bonwick in the Solaris Performance Group. In 2005 Bryan Cantrill was named one of the 35 Top Young Innovators by ''

Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editorially independent of the university. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "The" in ...

'',

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

's magazine. Cantrill was included in the

TR35 The Innovators Under 35 is a peer-reviewed annual award and listicle published by ''MIT Technology Review'' magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35. at ''Technology Review'' with lists of winners at technologyreview.com ...

list for his development of

DTrace DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework originally created by Sun Microsystems for troubleshooting kernel and application problems on production systems in real time. Originally developed for Solaris, it has since been released und ...

, a function of the OS

Solaris 10 Solaris is a proprietary Unix operating system originally developed by Sun Microsystems. After the Sun acquisition by Oracle in 2010, it was renamed Oracle Solaris. Solaris superseded the company's earlier SunOS in 1993, and became known for ...

that provides a non-invasive means for

real-time Real-time or real time describes various operations in computing or other processes that must guarantee response times within a specified time (deadline), usually a relatively short time. A real-time process is generally one that happens in defined ...

tracing and diagnosis of

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

. Sun technologies and technologists, including

and Cantrill, also received an

InfoWorld ''InfoWorld'' (abbreviated IW) is an information technology media business. Founded in 1978, it began as a monthly magazine. In 2007, it transitioned to a web-only publication. Its parent company today is International Data Group, and its siste ...

Innovators Award that year. In 2006, "The DTrace trouble-shooting software from Sun was chosen as the Gold winner in ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

s 2006 Technology Innovation Awards contest." In 2008, Cantrill, Mike Shapiro and Adam Leventhal were recognized with the USENIX Software Tools User Group (STUG) award for "the provision of a significant enabling technology." Together with Shapiro and Leventhal, Cantrill founded Fishworks, a stealth project within Sun Microsystems which produced the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems. He left Oracle on July 25, 2010 to become the Vice President of Engineering at

. He announced his transition to being Chief Technology Officer at

in April 2014, and held that position until announcing his departure as of July 31 of 2019. He is now the CTO of Oxide Computer company He was a member of the ACM Queue Editorial Board.

Controversies and opinions

During an online technical discussion of Solaris with Linux kernel developer David S. Miller in 1996, Cantrill responded to Miller's lengthy comment with a one-line reply, "Have you ever kissed a girl?" In 2015, during a discussion concerning Ben Noordhuis's departure from the

Node.js Node.js is an open-source server environment. Node.js is cross-platform and runs on Windows, Linux, Unix, and macOS. Node.js is a back-end JavaScript runtime environment. Node.js runs on the V8 JavaScript Engine and executes JavaScript code o ...

project, Cantrill said that the 1996 comment continues to be cited, decades later, and wrote about his regrets in sending the response, which he called "stupid". After Cantrill left Oracle in 2010 he compared the company's behavior to the Nazis'. Cantrill announced at FISL 2012 his strong preference for

permissive {{about, , the 1970 British film, Permissive (film), the grammatical mode, Permissive mood, the flavor of software license, permissive free software licence A permissive cell or host is one that allows a virus to circumvent its defenses and replica ...

open source

software license A software license is a legal instrument (usually by way of contract law, with or without printed material) governing the use or redistribution of software. Under United States copyright law, all software is copyright protected, in both source ...

s over

copyleft Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose ...

licenses by calling the copyleft

GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...

license family "anti-collaborative" and " viral."

Articles

* * * *

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Cantrill, Bryan Living people Open source people American computer scientists American computer programmers Solaris people Brown University alumni 1974 births Sun Microsystems people American chief technology officers American software engineers