Rob Landley, Programmer

SUMMARY:

Linux Programmer with speaking, writing, and project management skills.

Multiple programming languages (C, Python, shell scripting, Java), and areas of expertise (embedded, system integration, cross compiling, network administration, CGI scripting, kernel tweaking, SMP/threading). Also college instructor, columnist, and convention organizer.

PROGRAMMING WORK EXPERIENCE:

• 2008  Position: Linux Consultant for Oxford Consulting.


• 2007  Position: Fellowship from the Linux Foundation
  • Project: Linux Kernel Documentation. Six month fellowship to create and maintain a central kernel documentation website, improve and maintain existing documentation and related tools, and write new documentation. See "http://kernel.org/doc", the source control repository at "http://landley.net/hg/kdocs", and May-Oct 2007 in the mailing list archive at "http://marc.info/?l=linux-doc".
  
  
• 2006-2007  Position: Embedded Linux Developer for TimeSys
  • Project: "BusyBox" 50% of work week spent maintaining BusyBox.
  • Project: "TimeSys LinuxLink" General embedded Linux development. Acted as domain expert in uClibc and initramfs, worked on cross-compilers and system integration, wrote test software, helped design new build system, spoke at CELF and OLS, answered customer questions, wrote documentation, added Mercurial support to source control system, did Linux kernel development, created a minicom replacement to improve boardfarm automation, etc.
  
  
• 2005  Position: Programmer for Giganews
  • Project: "GCF support". Implemented (in Perl) a dozen test cases for GCF (usenet NNTP forwarding software). Wrote (in C) a statistical usenet spam filtering plugin for GCF.
  
  
• 2004-2005  Position: Consultant at Dell
  • Project: "Rogers" Hardware diagnostic software for SCSI/SAS RAID. Implemented a C++ plugin library according to Dell's existing design, for marshalling data between device firmware (third party binary) and various user interfaces (web based, command line, and standalone Java application).
  
  
• 2003-2004  (Consulting work still under NDA).
  
  
• 2001-2002  Position: Head programmer for WebOffice
  • Project: "iLand gateway" A single box firewall and fileserver for small offices. Web-GUI administration (through Apache with Python CGI), Virtual Private Network (DNAT+SSH+netcat), Network Attached Storage (Samba and custom file transfer CGI), DHCP, Bind, PostgreSQL, root partition on loopback mounted zisofs allowing "firmware upgrade" (whole OS upgraded by replacing GPG signed file). Based on a custom "Linux from Scratch" system with the 2.4 kernel. Designed, implemented, documented, and created manufacturing process for this project.
  
  
• 2000  Position: Head of Linux Development for BOXX Technologies, a high-end graphics/video hardware start-up.
  • Responsibilities: Supervised two people, system configuration/tuning/testing, some software development (C and Java), design of new release management process, customer support/firefighting. Convinced Boxx to reconsider exclusive relationship with Intel and try AMD Athlon, resulting in Boxx and Tyan co-designing the first dual Athlon motherboard (OEMed as Tyan Thunder).
  
  
• 1999  Position: Consultant with Enscicon at Trilogy for IBM.
  • Project: "Order Processing and Forwarding", Java based client/server project connecting IBM's sales and shipping SQL/MQSeries databases. Deployed on AIX and NT.
  
  
• 1998  Position: Contract programmer for Alternative Resources Corporation.
  • Project: 6 month contract at IBM to resume work on "Feature Install" (see 1995) to support several new OS/2 products.
  
  
• 1998  Position: Head programmer for Quest Math & Science Multimedia.
  • Project: "Interactive Diagrams", a series of 45 Java applets for a Pre-calculus tutorial on a CD bundled with a McGraw-Hill textbook.
  
  
• 1995-1997  Position: Full-time development programmer at IBM.
  
  • Project: "JavaOS Application Bringup", debugging JavaOS on Power PC and Intel clients, ensuring compatability with multiple third party java applications.
  • Project: "IBM Software Choice", for purchasing and installing IBM's OS/2 software via the World Wide Web (using Feature Install engine controlled via Netscape plugins).
  • Project: "Feature Install", 32 bit Corba compliant OS/2 install, uninstall, and system inventory software used to install "Falcon" (OS/2 for Power PC) and "Merlin" (OS/2 Warp 4.0).

NON-PROGRAMMING WORK EXPERIENCE:

• Adjunct faculty member at Austin Community College (1998-2000), teaching "Intro to Java", "Unix Operating System I", and "Multiuser Operating Systems".
• Stock market investment columnist for The Motley Fool at www.fool.com from 1998-2000.
• Convention Organizer: Penguicon and Linucon. Co-founded Penguicon in Michigan in 2003 (still going, see www.penguicon.org), founded and chaired Linucon (a 501c3 non-profit) in October, 2004.
• Technical Editor for the "The Art of Unix Programming", by Eric Raymond.
• Wrote documentation for Linux kernel. See "http://landley.net/writing/" for examples.
• Presented two tutorials ("Populating Initramfs with BusyBox and uClibc" and "Introduction to cross-compiling") at Ottawa Linux Symposium in 2006 and 2007.

NON-WORK (OPEN SOURCE) PROGRAMMING EXPERIENCE:

• busybox Starting in 2003, extended busybox to fully replace the corresponding GNU tools in a development environment (for Firmware Linux), and for SUSv3 compliance. Wrote new versions of sort, sed, catv, dmesg, halt, count, losetup, mdev, mkswap, mount, nc, poweroff, reboot, seq, switch_root, umount... Re-implemented Julian Seward's bunzip2 algorithm: the version now in busybox compiles to less than 7k and is over 10% faster. Became BusyBox maintainer for versions 1.01 to 1.2.2.
• Firmware Linux My own distribution, an entire Linux system in a single file: kernel+initramfs+squashfs (root partition based on busybox+uclibc+2.6 kernel). With development tools (gcc, binutils, make) it is capable of recompiling itself under itself. Boots using a modified version of LILO (added a "size=" parameter). Build process uses User Mode Linux to mount and chroot without needing to run as root, and to portably produce a C library optimized for a newer kernel version than the host system needs to run on. New version under development cross-compiles for x86 and uses QEMU instead of UML. See "http://landley.net/code/firmware" for details.
• Too many others to list...

FORMAL EDUCATION:

• 1997-1998, 2003-2004 - Enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin, as a graduate student in Computer Science. (Withdrew due to work commitments both times.)
• 1999-present - Periodic Linux seminars at Atlanta Linux Showcase and Linux World Expo.
• 1995-1997 - IBM internal courses in SOM, OS/2 PM, and Java.
• 1992-1995 - Bachelor's degree from Rutgers University (Camden, NJ). GPA 3.419, Majors in Computer Science and General Science, minors in Math & English.