Nathan Oostendorp is an American technologist, author, and entrepreneur. He is from

Holland, Michigan Holland is a city in Ottawa County, Michigan, Ottawa and Allegan County, Michigan, Allegan counties in the U.S. state of Michigan. Located in the West Michigan, western region of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, Lower Peninsula, the city is si ...

and is a co-founder of the technology news website and community

Slashdot ''Slashdot'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''/.'') is a social news website that originally billed itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters". It features news stories on science, technology, and politics that are submitted and evaluated by site ...

and founder of the online community

Everything2 Everything2 (styled Everything2 or E2 for short) is a collaborative online community consisting of a database of interlinked user-submitted written material. E2 is moderated for quality, but has no formal policy on subject matter. Writing on E ...

Biography

Oostendorp was a contributor and content editor of Slashdot as well as an author of the SlashCode software—Slashdot's

freely licensed Free content, libre content, libre information, or free information is any kind of creative work, such as a work of art, a book, a software, software program, or any other creative Media (communication), content for which there are very minimal ...

technological platform. He was a founder of the firm Blockstackers Intergalactic (BSI) which managed and developed the website. In addition to his work on Slashdot, Oostendorp's work at BSI included the creation of the early online encyclopedia project

, and the

Perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...

programming web community

PerlMonks ''PerlMonks'' is a community website covering all aspects of Perl programming and other related topics such as web applications and system administration. It is often referred to by users as 'The Monastery'. The name PerlMonks, and the general styl ...

which used the Everything Engine. After the sale of BSI to Andover.net and subsequently to VA Linux Systems (which became

Geeknet Geeknet, Inc. is an American company that is a subsidiary of GameStop based in Fairfax County, Virginia. The company was formerly known as VA Research, VA Linux Systems, VA Software, and SourceForge, Inc. History VA Research VA Research was foun ...

), Oostendorp worked as a developer and manager at the

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

and

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

hosting platform

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service founded by Geoffrey B. Jeffery, Tim Perdue, and Drew Streib in November 1999. SourceForge provides a centralized software discovery platform, including an online platform for managing and hosting open-source soft ...

. Oostendorp has a master's degree in

Information Economics Information economics or the economics of information is the branch of microeconomics that studies how information and information systems affect an economy and economic decisions. One application considers information embodied in certain types ...

from the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

School of Information. While at Michigan, he published several academic papers based on his experience with online communities. Oostendorp founded the

Ann Arbor, Michigan Ann Arbor is a city in Washtenaw County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851, making it the List of municipalities in Michigan, fifth-most populous cit ...

-based

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 ...

startup Sight Machine (formerly Ingenuitas) focused on industrial applications of computer vision techniques. He is the author of the software SimpleCV and holds a patent related to computer vision.

References

External links

Oostendorp's personal homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Oostendorp, Nathan Living people American information technology businesspeople Businesspeople in software People from Holland, Michigan Slashdot Geeknet University of Michigan School of Information alumni Year of birth missing (living people)