Lennart Poettering (born 15 October 1980) is a German

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 ...

working for

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

and the original author of

PulseAudio PulseAudio is a network-capable sound server program distributed via the freedesktop.org project. It runs mainly on Linux, various BSD distributions such as FreeBSD and OpenBSD, macOS, as well as Illumos distributions and the Solaris operat ...

, Avahi and systemd.

Life and career

Poettering was born in

Guatemala City Guatemala City ( es, Ciudad de Guatemala), known locally as Guatemala or Guate, is the capital and largest city of Guatemala, and the most populous urban area in Central America. The city is located in the south-central part of the country, ne ...

but grew up in

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, and

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. Poettering worked for Red Hat from 2008 to 2022. He then joined

. Since 2003, Poettering has worked on more than 40 projects, mostly written in C. He is the

developer Developer may refer to: Computers * Software developer, a person or organization who develop programs/applications * Video game developer, a person or business involved in video game development, the process of designing and creating games * Web d ...

and maintainer of several

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

projects which have been widely adopted by

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

distributions, including

sound server (2004), Avahi zeroconf implementation (2005), and systemd init system (2010).

Controversies

Poettering is known for having controversial technical and architectural positions regarding the Linux ecosystem. His style has brought accusations that he is working against long-standing

Unix philosophy The Unix philosophy, originated by Ken Thompson, is a set of cultural norms and philosophical approaches to minimalist, modular software development. It is based on the experience of leading developers of the Unix operating system. Early Unix de ...

, which he addressed in his blog post ''The Biggest Myths.'' For instance, Poettering has advocated speeding up Linux development at the expense of breaking compatibility with

POSIX The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines both the system- and user-level application programming inter ...

and other

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

s such as the BSDs. He took this position because of his experience in writing some other low-level components in the desktop stack. He invites other developers to do the same. Poettering recommends also reading ''

The Linux Programming Interface ''The Linux Programming Interface: A Linux and UNIX System Programming Handbook'' is a book written by Michael Kerrisk, which documents the APIs of the Linux kernel and of the GNU C Library (glibc). Book It covers a wide array of topics deali ...

'' but ignoring the POSIX-specific parts. In 2011 Poettering, one of the main developers of

, praised the Windows and macOS audio stacks as "more advanced" and called

Open Sound System The Open Sound System (OSS) is an interface for making and capturing sound in Unix and Unix-like operating systems. It is based on standard Unix devices system calls (i.e. POSIX read, write, ioctl, etc.). The term also sometimes refers to th ...

"a simplistic 90's style audio stack" without relevance for a modern desktop. Also in 2011, when asked why the Linux desktop hadn't been widely adopted by mainstream users, he answered that: "Linux is still too fragmented... ndneeds to be streamlined...". In 2014 Poettering published an essay criticising how software in Linux distros is commonly packaged, updated, and deployed; and laid out proposals that he,

Kay Sievers Kay Sievers is a German computer programmer, best known for developing the udev device manager of Linux, systemd and the Gummiboot EFI bootloader. Kay Sievers made major contributions to Linux's hardware hotplug and device management subsy ...

Harald Hoyer Harald Hoyer is a computer programmer and photographer, best known for developing the dracut initramfs generator and framework, the udev device manager of Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based ...

, Daniel Mack, Tom Gundersen and David Herrmann, had for how the architecture should be changed.Revisiting How We Put Together Linux Systems
on 0pointer.net by Lennart Poettering ''"The classic Linux distribution scheme is frequently not what end users want, either. Many users are used to app markets like Android, Windows or iOS/Mac have. Markets are a platform that doesn't package, build or maintain software like distributions do, but simply allows users to quickly find and download the software they need, with the app vendor responsible for keeping the app updated, secured, and all that on the vendor's release cycle."'' (1 September 2014) The controversy around systemd culminated in personal attacks and alleged

death threat A death threat is a threat, often made anonymously, by one person or a group of people to kill another person or group of people. These threats are often designed to intimidate victims in order to manipulate their behaviour, in which case a de ...

s against Poettering. Poettering went on to put some blame on

Linus Torvalds Linus Benedict Torvalds ( , ; born 28 December 1969) is a Finnish software engineer who is the creator and, historically, the lead developer of the Linux kernel, used by Linux distributions and other operating systems such as Android. He also ...

and other

kernel Kernel may refer to: Computing * Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems * Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution * Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming * Kernel method, in machine learn ...

developers for being bad role models for encouraging an abusive discussion culture on technical disagreements. In 2017, Poettering received the Pwnie Award for Lamest Vendor Response to vulnerabilities reported in systemd.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Poettering, Lennart 1980 births Free software programmers Living people Linux people German computer programmers People from Guatemala City Red Hat employees Microsoft employees