OzLabs History
Linuxcare
In 1999 US-based company Linuxcare
employed Andrew Tridgell, founder of the Samba
project and author of rsync, and asked him to
establish a Free Software research and development group in Canberra, Australia. Tridgell
quickly recruited fellow
Australian National University (ANU) researcher and rsync
coauthor Paul Mackerras, who was responsible for the
PowerPC port of Linux
and the Linux implementation of PPP, and fellow Canberra
Linux User Group (CLUG) founder Stephen Rothwell, who was the Linux APM maintainer.
Also joining OzLabs in late 1999 were Tim Potter,
one of Tridgell's fellow Samba team members, Hugh
Blemings, author of gnokii, and Paul `Rusty'
Russell, author of the Linux ipchains
and netfilter
firewalling/packet-filtering software, and founder
of linux.conf.au, one of the world's major Linux technical
conferences.
Blemings was tasked with establishing the Australian section of Linuxcare's global
technical support team and, in early 2000, he hired ANU graduate David Gibson
and Apache web server
developer Martin Pool, who would later
author distcc
and Bazaar-ng. Sales Manager extraordinaire Martin Nightingale joined
the OzLabs team, and former ANU academic and system
administrator Martin Schwenke was hired to
provide technical support within the Canberra region.
Soon after this, Linuxcare rounded out its development and professional services team by
adding Linux Standard Base developer Chris
Yeoh, SPARC Linux maintainer Anton
Blanchard, later to be a PowerPC64 Linux maintainer, and Samba team
member Luke Leighton. OzLabs also gained its first remote
members, both working from Adelaide,
Australia: FreeBSD/NetBSD hacker Greg Lehey,
author of Vinum, and GNU toolchain hacker Alan Modra. The team was patiently watched over
by office administrator Tracy Whatman.
In mid-2000 Blemings became manager of the Linuxcare's Australian operation. Later in 2000
Nightingale left to lead VA Linux's Australian division, and Leighton left OzLabs and
returned to the United Kingdom.
Several members of OzLabs lectured or guest lecturered at
the Australian National University over the years,
adding weight to the ANUs already strong UNIX and Linux curriculum.
Prior to the widespread uptake
of broadband internet in Canberra, OzLabs provided a Linux CD downloading and
burning service, which gave students and members of the public access to Linux
distributions such as Debian, Mandrake and
Red Hat, without the
tedium of sneaker
netting thousands of floppy disks. The CDs were provided in exchange for
biscuits, Tim Tams were
generally favoured and were sometimes used in late
night Tim Tam
Slam binges.
In early 2001, after instability at Linuxcare, most OzLabs members took jobs elsewhere and
Linuxcare closed its Australian division.
VA Linux, Hewlett Packard, Snap, Canonical, Google
After leaving Linuxcare, OzLabs founder Andrew Tridgell joined
Martin Nightingale at VA Linux, along with Martin Pool and
Tim Potter. However, approximately 6 months later VA Linux
closed its Australian division. Martin Pool and Tim Potter joined
Hewlett Packard, while Andrew Tridgell joined Snap. In 2005, Martin Pool
took a job with Ubuntu's
commercial arm Canonical.
In 2012, Martin Pool left Canonical to take a job
with Google.
IBM
2001
Within a few months of leaving Linuxcare, most of the OzLabs
team (Anton Blanchard, Hugh Blemings, David Gibson, Greg Lehey, Paul Mackerras, Alan Modra,
Stephen Rothwell, Rusty Russell, Martin Schwenke, Chris Yeoh) had
joined IBM's Linux Technology Center to work on
PowerPC Linux and associated projects, with Hugh Blemings as
manager.
The team built up a close relationship with other Linux
hackers inside IBM, most notably those working on Linux on
PowerPC
in Austin, Texas
and Rochester, Minnesota.
Over the years many of these people have been considered part of the
extended OzLabs team, including Ryan Grimm, Olof Johansson, Nathan
Lynch, Jack Miller, Milton Miller II, Jake Moilanen, Sonny Rao, Will
Schmidt, Joel Schopp, Amos Waterland and Mike Wolf.
2002
-
Greg Lehey left IBM in mid-2002.
2003
-
Andrew Tridgell joined IBM's Almaden research team, working from
the Canberra office.
-
The team was officially joined by systems
administrator Keith
Matthews, a long term IBM systems engineer who had
already been helping to support the team's Power hardware.
-
Jeremy Kerr, who began
as an intern hacking on
nfsim,
also joined and wound up doing many things, mostly kernel
hacking, including becoming SPU FS maintainer for the Cell
Linux port.
-
Linux on Power hacker
and Yaboot
author Benjamin
Herrenschmidt also joined, eventually succeeding
Paul Mackerras as head Linux on Power maintainer in 2009.
2004
-
Ben Elliston, a long time GCC/toolchain hacker, joined.
-
Michael
Ellerman joined from IBM Global Services to work on
Power kernel.
-
Kelly Daly (now
Kelly Yeoh) also joined from IBM Global Services to work
on the kernel.
2005
-
Andrew Tridgell spent 2005 on a one-year fellowship
at OSDL.
-
Michael Neuling, a
kernel and hardware hacker who had worked with Rusty Russell
on netfilter, joined.
-
Tony Breeds, an
experienced Linux systems administrator who would turn his
hand to kernel hacking and bootloader development, joined
the team.
2006
-
Andrew Tridgell returned from his OSDL fellowship.
-
Hugh Blemings stood down from managing the team so that he
could move back to a technical role, and was replaced by
Martin Schwenke.
2007
-
Mark Nelson, a recent graduate, moved from IBM's
Global Business Services to join OzLabs as a kernel
hacker.
-
Ronnie Sahlberg,
a Samba, Wireshark and dbench hacker also joined in 2007
to work on clustered Samba with Andrew Tridgell,
primarliy CTDB.
-
Kathy Staples joined the team from IBM's Software Group,
where she worked in a pre-sales technical role, to learn
new skills and discover the intricacies of some kernel
hacking.
2008
-
Martin Schwenke stood down from managing the team and moved back
into a technical role, working with Andrew Tridgell and Ronnie Sahlberg
in the Scale-out File Services team.
-
Abhi Chatterjee
joined from the government sector to manage the team.
-
Kathy Staples left the team to rejoin IBM's Software Group.
-
Hugh Blemings moved on
to Canonical to manage
hardware enablement
for Ubuntu.
2009
-
Jeremy Kerr also moved to Canonical.
2010
-
Ben Elliston moved on to pursue a PhD in renewable energy.
-
Matt Evans, a hardware and
operating system hacker, joined from IBM UK to work on
Linux on Power.
-
Mark Nelson returned to Melbourne, taking up another position
at IBM.
-
Ian
Munsie, an ANU Software Engineering graduate, joined
the team to work on Linux on Power.
-
Alexey Kardashevskiy joined
from IBM's Russian System and Technology Laboratory to work
on Linux on Power.
2011
-
Amitay Isaacs joined the team to work
on Samba - initially Samba
4 and later CTDB.
2012
-
Matt Evans returned to the UK, taking a job with
ARM.
-
Ronnie Sahlberg moved on to Google.
-
Andrew Tridgell retired from IBM to work on auto-pilot software.
2013
-
Alistair Popple joined from the Australian Public Service
to work on Linux on Power.
-
Kelly Yeoh left IBM.
-
Jeremy Kerr rejoined IBM.
-
David Gibson left IBM to work at Red Hat.
2014
-
Stewart Smith joined IBM to work on skiboot and "cause trouble".
-
Joel Stanley joined IBM from Minelab to work on skiboot.
-
Cyril Bur joined IBM as a graduate.
-
Sam Mendoza-Jonas joined IBM as a graduate.
-
Sam Bobroff joined IBM to work on PowerKVM.
-
Gavin Shan moved to OzLabs to work on the kernel.
-
Tony Breeds left IBM to work at Rackspace.
-
Leonard Low joined IBM to help manage the team.
2015
-
Daniel Axtens joined IBM as a graduate.
-
Chris Yeoh sadly passed away.
-
Rusty Russell left IBM to join Blockstream.
-
Andrew Donnellan joined IBM as a graduate.
-
Russell Currey joined OzLabs from IBM Security on the Gold Coast.
-
Andrew Jeffery joined IBM.
-
Chris Smart joined IBM.
-
Daniel Black joined IBM.
2016
-
Oliver O'Halloran joined IBM as a graduate.
-
Alastair D'Silva joined IBM.
-
Balbir Singh joined IBM.
-
Suraj Jitindar Singh joined IBM as a graduate.
-
Nick Piggin joined IBM.
-
Chris Smart left IBM.
2017
-
Ian Munsie left IBM.
-
Gavin Shan left IBM to work at Alibaba.
-
Abhi Chatterjee left IBM to work at Amazon.
-
Daniel Axtens left IBM to work at Canonical.
2018
-
Rashmica Gupta joined IBM full time after two internships.
-
Cyril Bur left IBM to work at ARM.
-
Balbir Singh left IBM to work at Amazon.
2019
-
Jordan Niethe joined IBM.
-
Daniel Axtens rejoined IBM.
-
Ben Herrenschmidt left IBM to work at Amazon.
-
Stewart Smith left IBM to work at Amazon.
-
Sam Mendoza-Jonas left IBM to work at Amazon.
-
Leonard Low left IBM to work at Amazon.
-
Suraj Jitindar Singh left IBM to work at Amazon.
2020
-
Jeremy Kerr left IBM to become a pirate, and then founded Code Construct.
-
Alistair Popple left IBM to work at NVIDIA 🖕.
-
Sam Bobroff left IBM.
-
Daniel Black left IBM to work at MariaDB Foundation.
-
Oliver O'Halloran left IBM to work at Oracle.
2021
-
Martin Schwenke left IBM to work at DDN.
2022
-
Alastair D'Silva left IBM.
-
Daniel Axtens left IBM to work at Fastly.
-
Amitay Isaacs left IBM to work at DDN.
-
Rohan McLure joined IBM.
-
Ben Gray joined IBM.
-
Nicholas Miehlbradt joined IBM.
-
Alexey Kardashevskiy left IBM to work at AMD.
2023
-
Paul Mackerras retired from IBM.
-
Mikey Neuling left IBM to join Tenstorrent.
-
Russell Currey left IBM.
-
Andrew Jeffery left IBM to join Code Construct.
-
Anton Blanchard left IBM.
-
Jordan Niethe left IBM.
Post-IBM era
By 2024 the bulk of the group was no longer at IBM.
2024
-
Rohan McLure left IBM.
-
Alan Modra retired from IBM.
-
Ben Gray left IBM.
Sponsorship
OzLabs proudly sponsored
the OzLabs
Operating Systems Prize in 2010
at UNSW.
Et cetera
Text licensed under the GFDL, ©
Wikipedia and OzLabs.
