Dan Kohn
American entrepreneur (1972–2020)
Dan Kohn (November 20, 1972 – November 1, 2020) was an American serial entrepreneur and nonprofit executive who led the Linux Foundation 's Public Health initiative.[ 1] He was the executive director at Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), which sustains and integrates open source cloud software including Kubernetes and Fluentd , through 2020.[ 2] [ 3] The first company he founded, NetMarket , conducted the first secure commercial transaction on the web in 1994.[ 4]
Early life and education
Kohn was born in Philadelphia on November 20, 1972.[ 5] He studied at Phillips Exeter Academy ,[ 6] and graduated with a bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College in 1994.[ 7]
Career
NetMarket
Kohn co-founded and was CEO of NetMarket , an online marketplace. On August 11, 1994, NetMarket sold Ten Summoner's Tales , a CD by Sting , to Phil Brandenberger of Philadelphia using a credit card over the Internet. The New York Times described this as "...the first retail transaction on the Internet using a readily available version of powerful data encryption software designed to guarantee privacy." The encryption used in the transaction was provided by the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) program, incorporated into the X Mosaic browser.[ 8] [ 9]
Other work
Kohn worked as chief technology officer at Spreemo, a healthcare marketplace, and at Shopbeam, a shoppable ads startup. Earlier, he worked as vice president at Teledesic , the satellite-based Internet provider funded by Craig McCaw and Bill Gates [ 10] [ 11] and then became a general partner at Skymoon Ventures .[ 6]
Kohn co-authored RFC 3023, XML Media Types , which defined how XML and MIME interoperate and is the origin of the widely used +suffix in MIME types .[ 12] He also contributed two chapters to The Bogleheads' Guide to Retirement Planning .[ 13] [ 14]
The Linux Foundation and CNCF
As executive director of CNCF, Kohn helped expand CNCF membership to include the largest public cloud and enterprise software companies.[ 15] He led the efforts to create a conformance standard for Kubernetes and a Kubernetes certified service provider program in 2017.[ 16] [ 17]
During Kohn's tenure at CNCF, he oversaw the growth of KubeCon (the foundation's primary event) from 500 attendees in 2015 to over 12,000 at the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2019 in San Diego, California.[ 18]
Kohn was chief operating officer of the Linux Foundation [ 19] and helped launch the Linux Foundation's Core Infrastructure Initiative , a project created after Heartbleed to fund and support free and open-source software projects that are critical to the functioning of the Internet . More recently, he helped create their open source best practices badge.[ 20] [ 21]
As general manager of LF Public Health, Kohn helped "public health authorities use open source software to fight COVID-19 and other epidemics."[ 22]
Personal life
Kohn was married to climate scientist Julie Pullen. Pullen and Kohn had two sons.[ 23]
Death
Kohn died of complications from colon cancer in New York City on November 1, 2020, at age 47.[ 24]
References
^ "Priyanka Sharma takes over the leadership of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation" . TechCrunch . June 2020. Archived from the original on January 24, 2022. Retrieved June 8, 2020 .
^ "CNCF Names Kohn as Executive Director" . Light Reading. June 3, 2016. Archived from the original on November 10, 2016. Retrieved December 16, 2017 .
^ Darrow, Barb (August 9, 2017). "Amazon Joins Google, Goldman Sachs, and Twitter in This Cloud Foundation" . Fortune. Archived from the original on October 23, 2017. Retrieved December 16, 2017 .
^ Gilbert, Alorie. "E-commerce turns 10" . CNET . Retrieved June 8, 2020 .
^ "Daniel KOHN Obituary - New York, NY" . Dignity Memorial . Retrieved November 3, 2020 .
^ a b "Dan Kohn" . LinkedIn. Retrieved December 16, 2017 .
^ Behrens, Eric (December 16, 2009). "www.SWARTHMORE.edu" . Swarthmore College . Archived from the original on October 22, 2017. Retrieved November 3, 2020 .
^ Lewis, Peter H. (August 12, 1994). "Attention Shoppers: Internet Is Open" . New York Times . Archived from the original on September 3, 2017. Retrieved December 16, 2017 .
^ Grothaus, Michael (November 26, 2015). "You'll Never Guess What the First Thing Ever Sold on the Internet Was" . Fast Company. Archived from the original on February 15, 2017. Retrieved December 16, 2017 .
^ Brzezinski, Matthew (February 20, 1997). "Teledesic's 'Internet in the Sky' May Use Soviet-Made Missiles" . Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on December 29, 2017. Retrieved December 30, 2015 .
^ Kohn, Daniel M. (November 1997). "Providing global broadband Internet access using low-earth-orbit satellites". Computer Networks and ISDN Systems . 29 (15): 1763–1768. doi :10.1016/S0169-7552(97)00108-6 . ISSN 0169-7552 .
^ Murata, M.; St, S.; Kohn, D. (January 2001). "XML Media Types, RFC 3023" . Internet Engineering Task Force. doi :10.17487/RFC3023 . Archived from the original on December 15, 2017. Retrieved December 16, 2017 .
^ Larimore, Taylor; Lindauer, Mel, eds. (February 22, 2011). The Bogleheads' Guide to Retirement Planning . Wiley. ISBN 978-0470919019 .
^ "Bogleheads' Guide to Retirement Planning" . Bogleheads Wiki. Archived from the original on August 14, 2017. Retrieved December 16, 2017 .
^ Krazit, Tom (December 6, 2017). "Alibaba, Baidu step up support for cloud-native tech as CloudNativeCon kicks off" . GeekWire. Archived from the original on December 7, 2017. Retrieved December 16, 2017 .
^ Miller, Ron (November 13, 2017). "36 companies agree to a Kubernetes certification standard" . TechCrunch. Archived from the original on December 23, 2017. Retrieved December 16, 2017 .
^ Meyer, Dan (September 11, 2017). "CNCF Looks to Bridge Gap in Kubernetes Skills and Support" . SDxCentral. Archived from the original on December 29, 2017. Retrieved December 16, 2017 .
^ "Predictions 2020: Infrastructure and Ops Trends to Watch in 2020" . DevOps.com . December 24, 2019. Retrieved January 22, 2020 .
^ Lohr, Steve; O'Brien, Kevin J. (October 23, 2007). "Microsoft Is Yielding in European Antitrust Fight" . New York Times . Archived from the original on June 5, 2015. Retrieved December 16, 2017 .
^ Bhartiya, Swapnil (May 3, 2016). "CII's Best Practices badge program is making open source projects more secure" . CIO. Archived from the original on July 14, 2016. Retrieved December 16, 2017 .
^ "Core Infrastructure Initiative Best Practices Badge" . Github. Archived from the original on April 9, 2017. Retrieved December 16, 2017 .
^ "Priyanka Sharma takes over the leadership of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation" . TechCrunch . June 2020. Archived from the original on January 24, 2022. Retrieved June 8, 2020 .
^ "Dr. Julie Pullen" . Dr. Julie Pullen . Retrieved November 3, 2020 .
^ "An Open Source Leader Is Gone, a Remembrance of Dan Kohn" . The New Stack . November 2, 2020. Retrieved November 2, 2020 .
External links