Bdale Garbee

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Bdale Garbee is a computer specialist who works with Linux, particularly Debian GNU/Linux. He is currently the Linux CTO at Hewlett-Packard and the current President of Software in the Public Interest.

Bdale has been a Debian developer since the earliest days of the project in the mid-1990s. He set up the original developer machine named master.debian.org in 1995. He served as a Debian Project Leader (DPL) for one year (2002-2003). He was the first DPL to not succeed himself while still being a candidate in the election after his first term. He has served on the board of directors of Software in the Public Interest, the non-profit organization that collects donations for Debian, since July 29, 2004, and was elected president on August 1, 2006.

In September 2008, he received a "Lutèce d'Or" during the french event Paris Capitale du Libre as the FLOSS personality of the year.

He is also an amateur radio hobbyist, a member of AMSAT, Tucson Amateur Packet Radio (former vice-president) and American Radio Relay League.

The name "Bdale" is an abbreviation of "Barksdale", given in honor of his maternal grandfather, Alfred D. Barksdale.

At linux.conf.au '09, Bdale's 27-year-old beard was removed by Linus Torvalds to raise funds for Tasmanian Devil facial tumour disease research.^[1] The pictures of Linus Torvalds shaving Bdale are put up at LWN.net.^[2]

[edit] External links

• Bdale Garbee's homepage
• Beyond Doing Business, podcast of Bdale's keynote at OSCON, 2004.

[edit] References

Preceded by Ben Collins

Debian Project Leader April 2002 – April 2003

Succeeded by Martin Michlmayr