Harald Welte, also known as LaForge, is a German

programmer A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

. Welte is the founder of the

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, n ...

project Osmocom and was formerly involved in the netfilter/iptables and Openmoko projects. He is a member of the

Chaos Computer Club The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) is Europe's largest association of hackers with 7,700 registered members. Founded in 1981, the association is incorporated as an '' eingetragener Verein'' in Germany, with local chapters (called ''Erfa-Kreise'') i ...

Biography

Until 2007, Welte was the chairman of the core team responsible for the netfilter/iptables project. He is also credited with writing the ''

UUCP UUCP is an acronym of Unix-to-Unix Copy. The term generally refers to a suite of computer programs and protocols allowing remote execution of commands and transfer of files, email and netnews between computers. A command named is one of the pr ...

over

SSL SSL may refer to: Entertainment * RoboCup Small Size League, robotics football competition * ''Sesame Street Live'', a touring version of the children's television show * StarCraft II StarLeague, a Korean league in the video game Natural language ...

how-to'', and contributions to User-mode Linux and international encryption kernel projects, among others. Welte has become prominent for his work with

gpl-violations.org gpl-violations.org is a not-for-profit project founded and led by Harald Welte in 2004. It works to make sure software licensed under the GNU General Public License is not used in ways prohibited by the license. Goals The goals of the project are ...

, an organisation he set up in 2004 to track down and prosecute violators of the GPL, which had been untested in court until then. Welte was part of Openmoko team, a project to create a

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whi ...

platform using free software. However, in 2007, Welte announced his withdrawal from Openmoko, citing internal friction and demotivation. He continues to contribute as a volunteer to the project. On 25 July 2008,

VIA Technologies VIA Technologies Inc. (), is a Taiwanese manufacturer of integrated circuits, mainly motherboard chipsets, CPUs, and memory. It was the world's largest independent manufacturer of motherboard chipsets. As a fabless semiconductor company, VIA ...

appointed Harald Welte as its open source liaison. According to VIA, in his role as open source liaison Welte will be responsible for helping refine VIA's open source strategy and optimise its support for Linux. Welte will also "assist VIA to develop drivers that are in line with the standards and best practices of Linux kernel development, enhance the quality and public availability of VIA documentation, and improve interaction with the open source development community". Welte is the founder of the Osmocom project.

Awards

On 19 March 2008, the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 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 under copyleft ( ...

(FSF) announced that it had awarded the

Award for the Advancement of Free Software Free Software Foundation (FSF) grants two annual awards. Since 1998, FSF has granted the award for Advancement of Free Software and since 2005, also the Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit. Presentation ceremonies In 1999 it was pr ...

for 2007 to Welte, stating that ''"The awards committee honored both Welte's technical contributions to projects like the Linux kernel and the OpenMoko mobile platform project, and his community leadership in safeguarding the freedom of free software users by successfully enforcing the GNU General Public License in over one hundred cases since the gpl-violations.org project began in 2004."'' On 22 July 2008, Welte received the ''Defender of Rights'' Open Source Award, presented to him by

Chris DiBona Chris DiBona ('cdibona', born October 1971) was the director of open source at Google from August 2004 until January of 2023. The open source team at Google oversees license compliance and supports the open source developer community through prog ...

, who indicated the award was primarily for Welte's work on gpl-violations.org.

References

Sources

* * * * Duration 00:40:31. Covers Welte's pioneering work and software license compliance generally.

External links

Harald Welte's blog

Interview at the 3rd international GPLv3 conference
, June 22, 2006
Audio and video of a panel discussion including Welte
June 23, 2006
Interview in LWN.net
June 12, 2006
Interview at under-linux.org

* ttp://www.golem.de/0406/31852.html Interview with Harald Welte about gpl-violations.org (German) June 22, 2004
Podcast at CIO.com

Audio podcast: Harald Welte on gpl-violations.org and GSM security
{{DEFAULTSORT:Welte, Harald 1979 births Living people Linux kernel programmers People from Berlin Members of Chaos Computer Club