Jon "maddog" Hall (born 7 August 1950) is the board chair for the Linux Professional Institute.

Early life

Hall helped his father assemble toys at a toy store, and had three years of high school electronics shop.

Career

The nickname "maddog" was given to him by his students at Hartford State Technical College, where he was the department head of Computer Science. He now prefers to be called by this name. According to Hall, his nickname "came from a time when I had less control over my temper". He has worked for Western Electric Corporation, Aetna Life and Casualty, Bell Laboratories,

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...

(Digital), VA Linux Systems, and

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...

(SGI). He was the CTO and ambassador of the now defunct computer appliance company Koolu. It was during his time with Digital that he initially became interested in Linux and was instrumental in obtaining equipment and resources for

Linus Torvalds Linus Benedict Torvalds ( , ; born 28 December 1969) is a Finnish software engineer who is the creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel. He also created the distributed version control system Git. He was honored, along with Shinya Yam ...

to accomplish his first port, to Digital's Alpha platform. It was also in this general timeframe that Hall, who lives in New Hampshire, started the Greater New Hampshire Linux Users' Group. Hall has UNIX as his New Hampshire vanity license plate. Jon Hall with his gadgets 1

Hall serves or has served on the boards of several companies, and several non-profit organizations, including the USENIX Association. Hall has spoken about Linux and free software at the technology conference Campus Party many times since 2007. Hall holds a

Master of Science A Master of Science (; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree. In contrast to the Master of Arts degree, the Master of Science degree is typically granted for studies in sciences, engineering and medici ...

in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1977) and a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

in commerce and engineering from

Drexel University Drexel University is a private university, private research university with its main campus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Drexel's undergraduate school was founded in 1891 by Anthony Joseph Drexel, Anthony J. Drexel, a financier ...

(1973). In September 2015, Hall joined the board of The Linux Professional Institute, as chairman of the board. He is the co-founder of

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

ian

Internet of things Internet of things (IoT) describes devices with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other communication networks. The IoT encompasse ...

and Single-board computer project called Caninos Loucos based on University of São Paulo.

Advocacy

Hall has used his experience and name recognition to promote a variety of causes, generally involving

open-source hardware Open-source hardware (OSH, OSHW) consists of physical artifact (software development), artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open-design movement. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) and open-source hardware are created by th ...

or software in some fashion. In 2011 Hall gave talks and served on the planning committee for the leadership track o
POSSCON
in Columbia South Carolina. Hall is the president and evangelist for Project Cauã, which he describes as "a project to help create millions of sustainable, private sector, entrepreneurial jobs in dense urban areas in Latin America". The project is based around an open hardware and software design for small, low power computers which will be the basis for small scale but widespread entrepreneurs using this platform to bring networking and entertainment to urban areas. In 2013, Hall came on board as an advocate for the ARM 64-bit porting project being run by the Linaro group. The objective is to port a collection of Linux open-source libraries to the 64-bit ARM architecture (ARMv8). In January 2022, Hall gave testimony in
New Hampshire subcommittee
for the use of free and open source software for government use.

Personal life

In June 2012, the day after

Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer ...

's birthday, Hall published an article in '' Linux Magazine'' announcing that he was gay. He is the godfather to

' children.

References

External links

''linux today''
Words of a maddog, April 19, 1999

An Interview with Jon "Maddog" Hall
executive director of Linux International, at Linux World in Mexico City, Feb. 16, 2006
Interview
at LinuxWorld 2006
Linux Link Tech Show interview (audio), 2006

Interview
on TWIT.TV's ''FLOSS Weekly'' Podcast, March 24, 2007
International Community Wireless Summit 2007
Closing Plenary (audio), 2007
Jon Maddog Hall
How opensource will dominate the world. at LinuxFest Northwest 2009. (bad audio)
Jon Maddog Hall, "Free and Open Source Software in the developing world"
at FrOSCon 2010
March 2012 Interview
for the blog "The Linux Setup"
Interview
with Jon Hall at the LinuxTag in Karlsruhe by RadioTux
Jon Hall presentacion
pue.es academy
Greater New Hampshire Linux User Group
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hall, Jon 1950 births Living people Drexel University alumni American computer programmers Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute alumni Linux people Digital divide activists American gay men American nonprofit executives Scientists at Bell Labs Digital Equipment Corporation people Geeknet Silicon Graphics people Open source advocates