Jon "maddog" Hall (born 7 August 1950) is the board chair for the

Linux Professional Institute The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) is a Canadian non-profit organisation and oriented towards certifications for Linux, BSD and open-source software-based technologies. It was founded in October 1999. Linux Professional Institute Certific ...

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 Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

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 unt ...

(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 Koolu was a Canadian company started by Andrew Greig and Jon "maddog" Hall, which aim is to provide low-power computer appliances powered by free- and open-source software. It is now defunct. Their main product was the "Works Everywhere Applian ...

. 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, historically, the lead developer of the Linux kernel, used by Linux distributions and other operating systems such as Android. He also c ...

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 Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

as his New Hampshire

vanity license plate A vanity plate or personalized plate (United States and Canada); prestige plate, private number plate, cherished plate or personalised registration (United Kingdom); personalised plate (Australia, New Zealand, and United Kingdom) or custom pla ...

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 ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...

in Computer Science from

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute () (RPI) is a private research university in Troy, New York, with an additional campus in Hartford, Connecticut. A third campus in Groton, Connecticut closed in 2018. RPI was established in 1824 by Stephen Van ...

(1977) and a

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

in Commerce and Engineering from

Drexel University Drexel University is a private research university with its main campus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Drexel's undergraduate school was founded in 1891 by Anthony J. Drexel, a financier and philanthropist. Founded as Drexel Institute of Art, S ...

(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 ( 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 ...

ian

Internet of things The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other comm ...

and

Single-board computer A single-board computer (SBC) is a complete computer built on a single circuit board, with microprocessor(s), memory, input/output (I/O) and other features required of a functional computer. Single-board computers are commonly made as demonstrati ...

project called Caninos Loucos based on

University of São Paulo The University of São Paulo ( pt, Universidade de São Paulo, USP) is a public university in the Brazilian state of São Paulo. It is the largest Brazilian public university and the country's most prestigious educational institution, the best ...

Advocacy

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

open-source hardware Open-source hardware (OSH) consists of physical 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 this open-source culture movement and a ...

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. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical com ...

's birthday, Hall published an article in ''

Linux Magazine ''Linux Magazine'' is an international magazine for Linux software enthusiasts and professionals. It is published by the former Linux New Media division of the German media company Medialinx AG. The magazine was first published in German in 199 ...

'' announcing that he is 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 RadioTux is a German internet radio show. The topics are mostly around free and open source software, free operating systems like *BSD and Linux, as well as on sociopolitical issues. It was founded in 2001. There have been made more than 100 t ...

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 LGBT people American nonprofit executives Scientists at Bell Labs Digital Equipment Corporation people Geeknet Silicon Graphics people Open source advocates