Linux Foundation Hires Developer for Kernel.org

As the Executive Director of the open source foundation, Jim Zemlin, reports in his blog, two industry names ("hint: they start with letters like I and G," presumably alluding to IBM and Google) have contributed to financing a new full time position at LF. Since 2005, John "Warthog9" Hawley has been one of five administrators of the kernel.org website and can now assume the role full time. Zemlin describes Hawley's previous projects as having worked on "system operations, the wikis, the kernel.org Gitweb, the GeoDNS patches to ISC's BIND name server and a number of other things for kernel.org." Hawley also participated in other Open Source projects, including Syslinux, OpenSSI and PXE Knife. He is even expert in non-computer roles: "In his free time he enjoys cooking extravagant meals and watching bad movies."

Zemlin considers Hawley's job as "essential" for disseminating the principles behind which the worldwide distributed development of the Linux kernel functions. He describes the website's role as "the actual physical space - in cyberspace - where kernel developers get their work done. Without it, nothing happens." Zemlin further describes why the availability of kernel.org is essential for the Linux distribution and, therefore, for the foundation: "It is the primary site for the Linux kernel source and git, the distributed revision control/software management project created by Linus Torvalds." While this undertaking would not necessarily guarantee the success of an organization, Zemlin considers it a core competence of the Linux Foundation. "We marshal the forces of our members - they would have a hard time hiring the person directly... The model works. "