OSU Open Source Lab Announces Advisory Council

Members Include Industry Leaders from Novell, Google, Apache, Perl and Drupal

Media contact: Todd Simmons, 541-230-4013
Source: Jeff Sheltren, 541-713-3206

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The Oregon State University Open Source Lab, home to growing open source communities, today announced the formation of its new advisory council. Featuring leaders from global open source projects and vendors such as Apache, Perl, Drupal, the Linux operating system, Google, Novell, Acquia and Joost, the advisors will assist the Open Source Lab with its overall strategy, service development and outreach to industry partners.

"Open source" is a method of software development which enables its creators, user communities and commercial vendors alike, to freely use, copy, modify and redistribute the software and its underlying source code.

The Open Source Lab has provided world-class hosting and custom development for many of the world's largest and most far-reaching open source efforts, including the Mozilla Firefox browser, portions of the One Laptop Per Child project, the Linux Foundation's main infrastructure, the Apache Software Foundation and the Drupal content management system.

"OSL's hosting infrastructure and skilled staff were essential to fueling the growth of Drupal for our users and developers worldwide," said Dries Buytaert, the creator of the Drupal open source web publishing and collaboration platform and co-founder, chief technology officer at venture-backed start-up Acquia and a new advisory board member. "I'm excited about helping the Open Source Lab expand its services to help jump start the next generation of open source projects."

"Behind the scenes, the Open Source Lab powers many of the most important open source projects in the world," added Justin Erenkrantz, senior software engineer at Joost and president of the Apache Software Foundation, as well as an advisory board member. "I look forward to continuing to work with the OSL team to support even more communities and create new vendor partnerships."

"We're grateful for the guidance and support of so many luminaries from the open source industry," said Curt Pederson, vice provost for Information Services at OSU and chief information officer for the Oregon University System. "Our advisors will not only help us hone our services for open source communities everywhere, but create more opportunities for our students in real-world technology development environments."

In addition to Buytaert and Erenkrantz, the Open Source Lab named five other leaders from among the ranks of open source projects, vendors and communities. These include:

Chris DiBona. DiBona is the open source programs manager at Google. With his team, DiBona supports the open source community through initiatives including the Google Summer of Code program. DiBona facilitated the contribution of $750,000 in grants from Google to the Open Source Lab over the last three years.

Greg Kroah-Hartman. A senior fellow at Novell, Kroah-Hartman is a maintainer of the Linux kernel, the core of the open source Linux operating system. He is also an author of articles and books on Linux development.

Allison Randal. Randal is chief architect and lead developer of the open source project Parrot, on the board of directors of The Perl Foundation, chairman of the Parrot Foundation and founder and president of Onyx Neon Press. She also works for O'Reilly Media as chair of its annual Open Source Convention (OSCON).

Marie Deatherage. Deatherage is the director of communications and learning at the Meyer Memorial Trust. A long-time program officer for the Trust, she has participated in numerous open source projects and events. Deatherage also serves on the board of directors at Free Geek, a nonprofit community organization that recycles used technology to provide computers, education, Internet access and job skills training to those in need.

Jason McKerr. McKerr is director of technology for InsightsNow, Inc., a Corvallis, Ore.-based market research company. With extensive background in software engineering and finance, McKerr was previously a co-founder and operations manager of the Open Source Lab.

About the OSU Open Source Lab: The Oregon State University Open Source Lab is the home of growing, high-impact open source communities. Its world-class hosting services enable the Linux operating system, Apache web server, the Drupal content management system and more than 50 other leading open source software projects to collaborate with contributors and distribute software to millions of users globally. Through custom software development, vendor partnerships and industry events like the Government Open Source Conference (GOSCON), the Lab's staff and students encourage open source adoption in education, government, health care and other sectors. For more information, visit www.osuosl.org.

Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. Drupal is a trademark of Dries Buytaert. Other company and project names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies and projects.