A humble request for help

Hi Everyone,

I'm currently working on a thesis investigating how Open Source is affected by the influence of money and the interests of commercial companies. As the Linux Kernel efforts is the foundation of many companies it is interesting to study how their entrance to the scene have affected the community.

The thesis as well as research papers surrounding it will be released under the GNU Free Documentation License and as soon as the first drafts are available they will be published so that the community may comment upon it.

In order to improve the research, it would be great if you guys could spend a few minutes on this one. I have included below a list of the most active persons on this mailinglist during the year 2002. I have tried to establish their employer as far as e-mail adresses and google could help me out, but there are lots of unknowns, and probably some errors too. So please, send me patches.

Also, if you belive that there are others who should be on this list, or someone who shouldn't please let me know.

If there are someone out there who would be willing to answer some more detailed questions, such as how long they've been doing Open Source development as a source of income and how they think it have affected them and their efforts, please drop me a line. I'd be forever grateful. I am also very interested in interviewing developers who are major contributors on their free-time.

Alan Cox,RedHat
Andrew Morton,Moxi.com
David S. Miller,RedHat
Linus Torvalds,Transmeta
Greg Kh,Wirex ?
Jeff Garzik,Mandrake Software
Daniel Phillips,Innominate
Dave Jones,SuSE
Pavel Machek,SuSE
Rik Van Riel,Conectiva
William Lee Irwin III,IBM
Rusty Russell,LinuxCare
Robert Love,MontaVista Software
Ingo Molnar,RedHat
Jens Axboe,SuSE
Martin Dalecki,Evision Ventures? Andrea Arcangeli,SuSE
Christoph Hellwig,Caldera International Andre Hedrick,SuSe
Bill Davidsen,TMR Associates
Russell King,ARM Ltd
Alexander Viro,RedHat
Keith Owens,SGI
Zwane Mwaikambo,Unknown / Self-financed Thunder From The Hill,Unknown / Self-financed Martin J. Bligh,IBM
Vojtech Pavlik,SuSE
H. Peter Anvin,Transmeta
Richard B. Johnson,Analogic Corporation Andi Kleen,SuSE
Roman Zippel,Unknown / Self-financed Adrian Bunk,Unknown / Self-financed Larry McVoy,BitMover
Andreas Dilger,Cluster File Systems, Inc Eric W. Biederman,Unknown / Self-financed Denis Vlasenko,Unknown / Self-financed James Simmons,Transvirtual
George Anzinger,MontaVista Software Adam J. Richter,Yggdrasil
Anton Altaparmakov,Unknown / Self-financed Davide Libenzi,Unknown / Self-financed Andries Brouwer,Unknown / Self-financed Arnaldo Carvalho De Melo,Conectiva Benjamin Lahaise,RedHat
Tomas Szepe,Unknown / Self-financed Randy.Dunlap,OSDL
Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk,Unknown / Self-financed Rob Landley,Unknown / Self-financed Trond Myklebust,Unknown / Self-financed David Woodhouse,RedHat

Best Regards,

Stefan Görling

I am not sure whether I am what you are looking for as I don't get paid to work on software, but feel free to email any questions you want to ask. Also see below.

--Brian Jackson

Now at SGI

I think he started his own company

Andre Hedrick,SuSe -- the past.

Andre Hedrick, Self Funded.

I am one of the few who have tried to make a business model out of selling services which strictly promote open source. Contracts where it is all or nothing and they still have to pay. The services are to write only opensource drivers for contract. Well that day is coming to an end, and not by my choice.

If you want the decenting view, I may be your poster child.

Regards,

Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group

I think GregKH works for IBM.

And Jeff for RedHat.

That is no longer the case. The company went under. Currently I'm out of work. I can help out.