Chris DiBona ('cdibona', born October 1971) was the director of open source at

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

from August 2004 until January of 2023. The open source team at Google oversees license compliance and supports the open source developer community through programs such as the

Google Summer of Code The Google Summer of Code, often abbreviated to GSoC, is an international annual program in which Google awards stipends to contributors who successfully complete a free and open-source software coding project during the summer. , the program is ...

and through the release of open source software projects and patches on

Google Code Google Developers (previously Google Code) , application programming interfaces (APIs), and technical resources. The site contains documentation on using Google developer tools and APIs—including discussion groups and blogs for developers usi ...

. In his former work on Google's public sector software, he looked after Google Moderator and the polling locations API and election results. Before joining Google, he was an editor at ''

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

'' and co-founded Damage Studios. DiBona has a B.S. in computer science from George Mason University and a M.S. in software engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. He also co-edited '' Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution'' and '' Open Sources 2.0''. He was laid off from Google in January of 2023 as part of Alphabet's workforce reductions.

FLOSS Weekly

He formerly co-hosted ''

FLOSS Weekly FLOSS Weekly is a free and open-source software ( FLOSS) themed netcast from the TWiT Network. The show premiered on April 7, 2006, and features interviews with prominent guests from the free software/open source community. It was originally hoste ...

'' (a

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosin ...

that was spun off from the popular ''

This Week in Tech ''This Week in Tech''–casually referred to as ''TWiT'', and briefly known as ''Revenge of the Screen Savers''–is the weekly flagship podcast and namesake of the TWiT.tv network. It is hosted by Leo Laporte and many other former TechTV emplo ...

'') with

Leo Laporte Leo Laporte (; born November 29, 1956) is the host of ''The Tech Guy'' weekly radio show and a host on TWiT.tv, an Internet podcast network focusing on technology. He is also a former TechTV technology host (1998–2008) and a technology author. O ...

. The show premiered on April 7, 2006, and features prominent guests from the free software/open source community. He also appeared on ''This Week in Tech'' and ''CrankyGeeks'' from time to time and was in the documentary

Revolution OS ''Revolution OS'' is a 2001 documentary film that traces the twenty-year history of GNU, Linux, open source, and the free software movement. Directed by J. T. S. Moore, the film features interviews with prominent hackers and entrepreneurs incl ...

. On July 29, 2007, Laporte announced that due to commitment issues, DiBona was stepping down as host of FLOSS Weekly.

Science Foo Camp

DiBona runs Science Foo Camp annually with

Tim O'Reilly Tim O'Reilly (born 6 June 1954) is the founder of O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates). He popularised the terms open source and Web 2.0. Education and early life Born in County Cork, Ireland, Tim O'Reilly moved to San Francisco, C ...

of O'Reilly Media and Timo Hannay of ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

'' on the Google campus in Mountain View, California.

TechTV

DiBona was a

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 ...

commentator on

TechTV TechTV is a defunct 24-hour cable and satellite channel based in San Francisco featuring news and shows about computers, technology, and the Internet. In 2004, it merged with the G4 gaming channel which ultimately dissolved TechTV programming ...

's ''

The Screen Savers ''The Screen Savers'' is an American TV show that aired on TechTV from 1998 to 2005.Fost, Dan (17 May 1999)A Day in the Life of ZDTV's `The Screen Savers' ''San Francisco Chronicle'' The show launched concurrently with the channel ZDTV (later k ...

'', during 2004 and parts of 2005. His stories concentrated on fun applications and consumer use of Linux.

Other activities

DiBona formerly served on the board of Our Good Works, a non-profit that looks after the volunteer matching website Allforgood.org. He serves on the board of the Linux Foundation. DiBona served on the advisory board of imeem, a San Francisco, Ca. based social networking firm, and advise
PicPlz
a San Francisco start-up. He's a visiting scientist (formally a visiting scholar) at the

MIT Sloan School of Management The MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan or Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs, ...

, and an advisor to Mixed Media Labs, app.net project. He also advises Ingenuitas on their sightmachine project. He's also an associate in Google Ventures.DiBona bio
at Google Ventures.

References

External links

DiBona's Weblog
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Dibona, Chris 1971 births Living people Google employees American podcasters MIT Sloan School of Management faculty Open source advocates