Peter Mattis is an American

computer 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 ...

, entrepreneur, and business executive. He is the CTO and co-founder for

Cockroach Labs CockroachDB is a commercial distributed SQL database management system, developed by Cockroach Labs. History Cockroach Labs was founded in 2015 by ex-Google employees Spencer Kimball, Peter Mattis, and Ben Darnell. Cockroach Labs founders Ki ...

, a company he co-founded in 2014. His work as a programmer includes launching GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) while still in college, and assisting the source code development of CockroachDB, the namesake software of Cockroach Labs.

Early life and education

Mattis attended the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...

. While still a student in 1995, he developed the first version of GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), along with his roommate Spencer Kimball. Mattis was also a member of a student club at Berkeley called the eXperimental Computing Facility (XCF). Mattis graduated from Berkeley in 1997 with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. According to Mattis in 1999: On

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 ...

and the motivations to write it and what makes good and enduring free software:

Career

Mattis was previously employed as an engineer for Google, and is credited for his work Google Servlet Engine as well as helping spearhead

Colossus Colossus, Colossos, or the plural Colossi or Colossuses, may refer to: Statues * Any exceptionally large statue ** List of tallest statues ** :Colossal statues * ''Colossus of Barletta'', a bronze statue of an unidentified Roman emperor * ''Col ...

, a new version of the Google File System. In 2013, Mattis launched the company Viewfinder along with Kimball and Brian McGinnis, formerly of Lehman Brothers. The company developed an app that allowed social media users to share photos, chat privately, and search photo history without leaving the app. The company was acquired by

Square, Inc. Block, Inc. (formerly Square, Inc.) is an American multinational technology conglomerate founded in 2009 by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey and launched its first platform in 2010. It has been traded as a public company on the New York Stock Exch ...

in December 2013. Mattis moved to Square's New York City office where he became a senior member of the company's East Coast team. While at Google, Mattis used a database known as

Bigtable Bigtable is a fully managed wide-column and key-value NoSQL database service for large analytical and operational workloads as part of the Google Cloud portfolio. History Bigtable development began in 2004.. It is now used by a number of Googl ...

, and followed the development of its next generation, known as

Spanner A wrench or spanner is a tool used to provide grip and mechanical advantage in applying torque to turn objects—usually rotary fasteners, such as nuts and bolts—or keep them from turning. In the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New ...

. The database organizes data between thousands of servers to allow Google applications to stay online, even if an entire data center were to go offline. Mattis wanted to use this software but found there was nothing available outside of Google as either closed or open source that was similar. He launched CockroachDB as an open source project on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, cont ...

with Kimball, along with ex-

Google Reader Google Reader was an RSS/Atom feed aggregator operated by Google. It was created in early 2005 by Google engineer Chris Wetherell and launched on October 7, 2005, through Google Labs. Google Reader grew in popularity to support a number of progra ...

team member

Ben Darnell Ben Darnell is an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, and business executive. He is the chief technology officer for Cockroach Labs, a company he co-founded in 2015. Prior to his work at Cockroach Labs, he worked for tech companies t ...

. They later formed the company Cockroach Labs in order to accelerate development of the CockroachDB software. Mattis serves as the company's vice president of engineering and also contributes to the source code development of CockroachDB.

Personal life

Mattis is active in

CrossFit CrossFit is a branded fitness regimen that involves constantly varied functional movements performed at high intensity. The method was developed by Greg Glassman, who founded CrossFit with Lauren Jenai in 2000, with CrossFit its registered trad ...

and was named CrossFit Brooklyn's athlete of the month in January 2014.

References

External links

Cockroach Labs official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mattis, Peter American computer programmers Living people Year of birth missing (living people) GTK