John Gilmore (born 1955) is one of the founders of the

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ci ...

, the

Cypherpunk A cypherpunk is any individual advocating widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies as a route to social and political change. Originally communicating through the Cypherpunks electronic mailing list, informal g ...

s mailing list, and

Cygnus Solutions Cygnus Solutions, originally Cygnus Support, was founded in 1989 by John Gilmore, Michael Tiemann and David Henkel-Wallace to provide commercial support for free software. Its tagline was: ''Making free software affordable''. For years, employ ...

. He created the ''alt.*'' hierarchy in

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was ...

and is a major contributor to the

GNU Project The GNU Project () is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaborati ...

. An outspoken

civil libertarian Civil libertarianism is a strain of political thought that supports civil liberties, or which emphasizes the supremacy of individual rights and personal freedoms over and against any kind of authority (such as a state, a corporation, social no ...

, Gilmore has sued the

Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic m ...

, the

United States Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...

, and others. He was the plaintiff in the prominent case '' Gilmore v. Gonzales'', challenging secret travel-restriction laws, which he lost. He is an advocate for

drug policy reform Drug liberalization is a drug policy process of decriminalizing or legalizing the use or sale of prohibited drugs. Variations of drug liberalization include: drug legalization, drug re-legalization and drug decriminalization. Proponents of drug ...

. He co-authored the

Bootstrap Protocol The Bootstrap Protocol (BOOTP) is a computer networking protocol used in Internet Protocol networks to automatically assign an IP address to network devices from a configuration server. The BOOTP was originally defined in RFC 951. While some part ...

in 1985, which evolved into

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network management protocol used on Internet Protocol (IP) networks for automatically assigning IP addresses and other communication parameters to devices connected to the network using a cli ...

(DHCP), the primary way local networks assign an

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

to devices.

Life and career

As the fifth employee of

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, the ...

and founder of

Cygnus Support Cygnus Solutions, originally Cygnus Support, was founded in 1989 by John Gilmore, Michael Tiemann and David Henkel-Wallace to provide commercial support for free software. Its tagline was: ''Making free software affordable''. For years, employee ...

, he became wealthy enough to retire early and pursue other interests. He is a frequent contributor to

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 ...

, and worked on several

GNU GNU () is an extensive collection of free software (383 packages as of January 2022), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operat ...

projects, including maintaining the

GNU Debugger The GNU Debugger (GDB) is a portable debugger that runs on many Unix-like systems and works for many programming languages, including Ada, C, C++, Objective-C, Free Pascal, Fortran, Go, and partially others. History GDB was first written by ...

in the early 1990s, initiating

GNU Radio GNU Radio is a free software development toolkit that provides signal processing blocks to implement software-defined radios and signal processing, signal-processing systems. It can be used with external Radio frequency, RF hardware to create soft ...

in 1998, starting Gnash media player in December 2005 to create a free software player for

Flash Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional aliases * Flash (DC Comics character), several DC Comics superheroes with super speed: ** Flash (Barry Allen) ** Flash (Jay Garrick) ** Wally West, the first Kid ...

movies, and writing the pdtar program which became GNU

tar Tar is a dark brown or black viscous liquid of hydrocarbons and free carbon, obtained from a wide variety of organic materials through destructive distillation. Tar can be produced from coal, wood, petroleum, or peat. "a dark brown or black bit ...

. Outside of the GNU project he founded the

FreeS/WAN FreeS/WAN, for Free Secure Wide-Area Networking, was a free software project, which implemented a reference version of the IPsec network security layer for Linux. The project goal of ubiquitous opportunistic encryption of Internet traffic was n ...

project, an implementation of

IPsec In computing, Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) is a secure network protocol suite that authenticates and encrypts packets of data to provide secure encrypted communication between two computers over an Internet Protocol network. It is used in ...

, to promote the encryption of Internet traffic. He sponsored the

EFF EFF or eff may refer to: Politics * Economic Freedom Fighters, a South African communist political party * Economic Freedom Fund, an American political organization * Election Fighting Fund, a British suffragist organization supporting the ear ...

Deep Crack In cryptography, the EFF DES cracker (nicknamed "Deep Crack") is a machine built by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in 1998, to perform a brute force search of the Data Encryption Standard (DES) cipher's key space – that is, to dec ...

DES Des is a masculine given name, mostly a short form (hypocorism) of Desmond. People named Des include: People * Des Buckingham, English football manager * Des Corcoran, (1928–2004), Australian politician * Des Dillon (disambiguation), sever ...

cracker, sponsored the Micropolis city building game based on

SimCity ''SimCity'' is an open-ended city-building video game series originally designed by Will Wright. The first game in the series, ''SimCity'', was published by Maxis in 1989 and were followed by several sequels and many other spin-off "''Sim' ...

, and is a proponent of

opportunistic encryption Opportunistic encryption (OE) refers to any system that, when connecting to another system, attempts to encrypt communications channels, otherwise falling back to unencrypted communications. This method requires no pre-arrangement between the two ...

. Gilmore co-authored the

(RFC 951) with Bill Croft in 1985. The Bootstrap Protocol evolved into

DHCP The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network management protocol used on Internet Protocol (IP) networks for automatically assigning IP addresses and other communication parameters to devices connected to the network using a cli ...

, the method by which Ethernet and wireless networks typically assign devices an

. On the 22nd of October 2021,

announced that they have removed Gilmore from the Board following a governance dispute. The details of the dispute were not made public, and Gilmore described his parting as amicable.

Activism

Gilmore owns the

domain name A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As ...

toad.com, which is one of the 100 oldest active

.com The domain name .com is a top-level domain (TLD) in the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet. Added at the beginning of 1985, its name is derived from the word ''commercial'', indicating its original intended purpose for domains registere ...

domains. It was registered on August 18, 1987. He runs the

mail server Within the Internet email system, a message transfer agent (MTA), or mail transfer agent, or mail relay is software that transfers electronic mail messages from one computer to another using SMTP. The terms mail server, mail exchanger, and MX host ...

at toad.com as an

open mail relay An open mail relay is a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server configured in such a way that it allows anyone on the Internet to send e-mail through it, not just mail destined to or originating from known users. This used to be the default con ...

. In October 2002, Gilmore's ISP,

Verio Verio is a global web hosting provider headquartered in the United States. Incorporated in 1996 in Denver, Colorado, it is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) Communications, which acquired the company in 2000. Ve ...

, cut off his Internet access for running an open relay, a violation of Verio's terms of service. Many people contend that open relays make it too easy to send spam. Gilmore protests that his mail server was programmed to be essentially useless to

spammers This is a list of individuals and organizations noteworthy for engaging in bulk electronic spamming, either on their own behalf or on behalf of others. It is not a list of all spammers, only those whose actions have attracted substantial independen ...

and other senders of mass email and he argues that Verio's actions constitute censorship. He also notes that his configuration makes it easier for friends who travel to send email, although his critics counter that there are other mechanisms to accommodate people wanting to send email while traveling. The measures Gilmore took to make his server useless to spammers may or may not have helped, considering that in 2002, at least one mass-mailing worm that propagated through open relays — W32.Yaha — had been hard-coded to relay through the toad.com mail server. Gilmore famously stated of

Internet censorship Internet censorship is the legal control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet. Censorship is most often applied to specific internet domains (such as Wikipedia.org) but exceptionally may extend to all Inte ...

that "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it". He unsuccessfully challenged the constitutionality of secret regulations regarding travel security policies in '' Gilmore v. Gonzales''. Gilmore is also an advocate for the relaxing of

drug laws The prohibition of drugs through sumptuary legislation or religious law is a common means of attempting to prevent the recreational use of certain intoxicating substances. While some drugs are illegal to possess, many governments regulate the ...

and has given financial support to Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the

Marijuana Policy Project The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) is the largest organization working solely on marijuana policy reform in the United States in terms of its budget, number of members, and staff. Its stated aims are to: (1) increase public support for non-pu ...

Erowid Erowid, also called Erowid Center, is a non-profit educational organization that provides information about psychoactive plants and chemicals. Erowid documents legal and illegal substances, including their intended and adverse effects. Informat ...

MAPS A map is a symbolic depiction emphasizing relationships between elements of some space, such as objects, regions, or themes. Many maps are static, fixed to paper or some other durable medium, while others are dynamic or interactive. Although ...

, Flex Your Rights, and various other organizations seeking to end the

war on drugs The war on drugs is a Globalization, global campaign, led by the United States federal government, of prohibition of drugs, drug prohibition, military aid, and military intervention, with the aim of reducing the illegal drug trade in the Unite ...

. He is a member of the boards of directors of MAPS and the Marijuana Policy Project. Until October 2021, he was also a board member of the EFF.

Affiliations

Following the sale of

AMPRNet The AMPRNet (AMateur Packet Radio Network) or Network 44 is used in amateur radio for packet radio and digital communications between computer networks managed by amateur radio operators. Like other amateur radio frequency allocations, an IP ra ...

address space in mid-2019, Gilmore, under amateur radio call sign W0GNU, was listed as a board member of Amateur Radio Digital Communications, Inc., a non-profit involved in the management of the resources on behalf of the

amateur radio Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is the use of the radio frequency spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radiosport, contesting, and emergency communic ...

community.

Honours

Gilmore has received the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)#501(c)(3), 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...

's Advancement of Free Software 2009 award.

References

External links

*
Gilmore v. Gonzales information

* ttp://grep.law.harvard.edu/features/04/08/18/112237.shtml John Gilmore on inflight activism, spam and sarongs interview by Mikael Pawlo, August 18, 2004.
Gilmore on Secret Laws / Gonzales case
audio interview, 13 November 2006. {{DEFAULTSORT:Gilmore, John Living people American drug policy reform activists Free software programmers Web developers Computer programmers Cypherpunks GNU people Internet activists 1955 births American technology company founders American philanthropists People from York, Pennsylvania Amateur radio people Internet pioneers