Russ Nelson

For other people with the same name, see Russell Nelson (disambiguation).
"Crynwr" redirects here. For the Quakers, see Crynwyr.
Russ Nelson
Russ Nelson in 2005
Board of Directors, Open Source Initiative
In office
February 1998[1] – April 6, 2011[2]
Succeeded byJim Jagielski[2]
President, Open Source Initiative
In office
February 1, 2005[3] – February 23, 2005[4][5]
Preceded byEric S. Raymond[6]
Succeeded byMichael Tiemann[4]
Personal details
Born (1958-03-21) March 21, 1958 (age 66)[7]
Political partyLibertarian Party[8]
OccupationSoftware developer
Known forBoard member and former president of Open Source Initiative[9]
Websitehttp://russnelson.com/

Russell Nelson (born March 21, 1958) is an American computer programmer. He was a founding board member of the Open Source Initiative and briefly served as its president in 2005.[10]

Career

In 1983, Nelson and Patrick Naughton wrote Painter's Apprentice, a MacPaint clone.[11] Nelson was the author of Freemacs (a variant of Emacs used by FreeDOS).[12]

While attending university, Nelson began developing the collection of drivers later commercially released as the "Crynwr Collection".[13] In 1991, Nelson founded Crynwr Software, a company located in Potsdam, New York,[14] supporting deployment of large-scale e-mail systems, development of packet drivers, Linux kernel drivers,[15] and reverse engineering of embedded systems.[16]

In July 2010, Nelson was working on water quality sensors.[17]

Open Source Initiative

In 1998, Nelson became one of the six first members of the board of directors of the Open Source Initiative.[9][18]

On February 1, 2005, he was named as the new president of the Open Source Initiative, replacing Eric S. Raymond.[6] On February 7, Nelson published a post to his personal blog titled "Blacks are lazy", which generated controversy.[19][20][4] Nelson apologized to those who perceived the post (which he withdrew because it "was not well written") as racist.[21] Nelson resigned as president in early March (the resignation was backdated to February 23), and stated he did not believe himself to be politically savvy enough for the role of president.[4][22]

Nelson remained on the board of directors of the Open Source Initiative for another six years.[23]

Personal

Nelson is the son of Russell Edward Nelson and Gladys Jacobsen Nelson.[24] Formerly a Quaker,[25] for political reasons he no longer identifies as one, as of 2014.[26] Nelson is a pacifist, and a member of the Libertarian Party of the United States.[8]

Nelson created the first Quaker website in the world, quaker.org, in early 1995.[25] He transferred the website to Friends Publishing Corporation, a Quaker nonprofit, in March 2018.[27]

References

  1. ^ "History of the OSI". 19 September 2006. Archived from the original on 2007-09-12. Retrieved 2022-04-09.
  2. ^ a b "OSI Board Meeting Minutes, Wednesday, April 6, 2011". 10 June 2011. Archived from the original on 2011-12-12. Retrieved 2022-04-09.
  3. ^ Corbet, Jon. "Interview: OSI's new president". Archived from the original on 2008-09-08. Retrieved 2022-04-08.
  4. ^ a b c d Varghese, Sam (2005-03-09). "Racism row forces open source head out". The Age. Retrieved 2008-07-11.
  5. ^ Vaughan-Nichols, Stephen (4 March 2005). "New OSI President Steps Down". Retrieved 2022-04-09. Russ Nelson, the newly elected president of the Open Source Initiative, resigned his office retroactively to Feb. 23
  6. ^ a b LaMonica, Martin (2005-02-01). "Open-source leader steps aside at industry group". CNET News. Retrieved 2009-02-03.
  7. ^ Nelson, Russ. "Russ Nelson's Home Page". russnelson.com. Retrieved 2011-04-01.
  8. ^ a b Chris DiBona; Danese Cooper; Mark Stone, eds. (1 November 2005). "List of Contributors". Open sources 2.0: the continuing evolution. O'Reilly Media, Inc. pp. xix. ISBN 978-0-596-00802-4. Retrieved 1 April 2011. Libertarian.
  9. ^ a b Tiemann, Michael (2006-09-19). "History of the OSI". Opensource.org. Retrieved 2008-08-22.
  10. ^ OPEN SOURCE INITIATIVE (OSI) ANNOUNCES EXPANDED PROGRAMS, COUNSEL, AND BOARD
  11. ^ Patrick Naughton (1997). Java Handbook. Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited. ASIN B007ITC4G4.
  12. ^ "EMACS". FreeDOS - Software List. freedos.org. Archived from the original on 2007-09-15.
  13. ^ Bill Machrone and Michael J. Miller (1991-12-31). "8th Annual Awards for Technical Excellence". PC Magazine. Vol. 10, no. 22. New York, NY: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. p. 136.
  14. ^ Nelson, Russ (August 1998). "Open Source Software Model". Linux Journal (52). Retrieved 2011-04-01.
  15. ^ Paul Gortmaker (1995-11-18). Linux Ethernet-Howto. Linux Documentation Project. Retrieved 2016-10-31.Linus Torvalds (1998-09-16). CREDITS. Linux Foundation. Retrieved 2016-10-31.
  16. ^ Paul Wallich (2001-09-03). "Mindstorms Not Just a Kid's Toy". IEEE. Retrieved 2016-10-31.Patrick Reynolds (1997-12-04). "The Connectix Quickcam Technical FAQ". Retrieved 2016-10-31.
  17. ^ Mac Slocum, interviewer (23 July 2010). Russ Nelson interviewed at OSCON 2010. YouTube. United States: O'Reilly Media. Archived from the original on 2021-12-12. Retrieved 1 April 2011.
  18. ^ Biancuzzi, Federico (2008-02-12). "A Look Back at 10 Years of OSI". onlamp.com. Retrieved 2011-04-01.
  19. ^ Nelson, Russ (2005-02-07). "Blacks are lazy". Russ Nelson's personal blog. Archived from the original on 2005-03-08. Retrieved 2022-04-08. Black people are lazy in that they work less hard than whites
  20. ^ Stuart, Finlayson. "Open source chief makes swift exit after "racist" gaffe". Information & Data Manager (IDM). Retrieved 14 February 2019.
  21. ^ "Russ Nelson : economics/blacks-are-lazy.html". blog.russnelson.com. 2005-03-08. Archived from the original on 2005-03-08. Retrieved 2023-08-10. It was not well written and I have withdrawn it. I apologize to anybody who thought that the posting itself was racist.
  22. ^ "Russ Nelson's blog : /opensource/osi-presidency-resignation.html". Russ Nelson's blog. 2005-03-02. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  23. ^ "Board Meeting Report". Opensource.org. 2011-03-18. Retrieved 2011-04-01.
  24. ^ Nelson, Russ (1 November 2005). "Open Source and the Small Entrepreneur". In Chris DiBona; Danese Cooper; Mark Stone (eds.). Open sources 2.0: the continuing evolution. O'Reilly Media, Inc. pp. 138. ISBN 978-0-596-00802-4. Retrieved 1 April 2011.
  25. ^ a b A Friend. "Wider Quaker World". Ottawa Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Retrieved 2016-10-31.
  26. ^ Russ Nelson (2014-05-19). "Facebook". Russ Nelson's Facebook Timeline. Archived from the original on 31 March 2019. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
  27. ^ "quaker.org | The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)". Archived from the original on 2018-03-24.