Simon Phipps (programmer)

For the game designer, see Simon Phipps (game designer).
Simon Phipps at the Wikimedia Foundation office in April 2018

Simon Phipps is a computer scientist and web and open source advocate.

Phipps was instrumental in IBM's involvement in the Java programming language, founding IBM's Java Technology Center.[1] He left IBM for Sun Microsystems in 2000, taking leadership of Sun's open source programme from Danese Cooper.[2] Under Phipps, most of Sun's core software was released under open source licenses, including Solaris and Java.[3]

Phipps was not hired into Oracle as part of the acquisition of Sun Microsystems and his final day was March 8, 2010 when the two entities combined. Following Sun, he spent a year as Chief Strategy Officer of identity startup ForgeRock[4] before becoming an independent consultant. In 2015 he briefly joined Wipro Technologies as director of their open source advisory practice.[5]

Phipps was President of the Open Source Initiative[6][7] until 2015 when he stepped down in preparation for the end of his Board term in 2016,[8] and was re-elected in 2017 and re-appointed President by the Board in September 2017.[9] He was a board member of the Open Rights Group[10] and The Document Foundation[11] and on the advisory board of Open Source for America.[12] He has served on a number of advisory boards for other projects, including as CEO of the MariaDB Foundation,[13][14][15] and at the GNOME Foundation,[16] OpenSolaris,[17] OpenJDK,[18] and OpenSPARC[19] and most recently the AlmaLinux OS Foundation.[20]

He has appeared as a guest and occasional co-host on episodes of the FLOSS Weekly podcast.[21]

  1. ^ "Ibm Java Evangelist Speaks Of Java Tsunami". Computergram International. Business Library. May 26, 1998. Archived from the original on 8 July 2012.
  2. ^ Montalbano, Elizabeth (2005-08-18). "Sun exec takes control of open source projects". InfoWorld. Archived from the original on Feb 3, 2014.
  3. ^ Berlind, David (November 13, 2006). "The ripple effect of a GPL'd Java will reach far and wide". Between the Lines. ZDNet. Archived from the original on 2008-06-12.
  4. ^ "Simon Phipps joins open identity startup ForgeRock". The H Open. 10 May 2010. Archived from the original on 2013-12-08.
  5. ^ Phipps, Simon (2 March 2015). "New role at Wipro". Wild Webmink. Retrieved 15 May 2015.
  6. ^ "Board - Annotated". OSI. Archived from the original on 2010-12-22.
  7. ^ "OSI Board Meeting Report". webmink's blog. Open Source Initiative. 2013-05-11. Archived from the original on Jun 18, 2013. Retrieved 2013-05-14.
  8. ^ Phipps, Simon (2015-05-14). "Handing On The Baton". Open Source Initiative. Archived from the original on 21 November 2015. Retrieved 15 May 2015.
  9. ^ Randal, Allison (2017-09-28). "Transitions in Leadership". Open Source Initiative. Archived from the original on 1 October 2017. Retrieved 2 October 2017.
  10. ^ "Directors". Open Rights Group. Archived from the original on May 11, 2020.
  11. ^ "Board". The Document Foundation. Archived from the original on Jul 9, 2016. Retrieved 8 July 2016.
  12. ^ "Board of Advisors". OSFA. Archived from the original on 2010-02-09. Retrieved 2009-11-04.
  13. ^ Phipps, Simon (2013-04-18). "Taking MariaDB Foundation Forward". Webmink. Retrieved 2016-08-07.
  14. ^ Vaughan-Nichols, Steven J. (2013-04-23). "Look out, Oracle: SkySQL and MariaDB join forces". ZDNet. Retrieved 2013-05-08.
  15. ^ Phipps, Simon (Oct 1, 2014). "SkySQL bought the MariaDB trademark when it purchased Monty's company Monty Program AB, and it has decided to rename itself using the trademark (like MongoDB before it)". Google+. Archived from the original on 8 December 2014. Retrieved 8 December 2014.
  16. ^ "About the GNOME Foundation". GNOME Foundation. Archived from the original on 2011-09-08. Retrieved 2008-07-25.
  17. ^ "Poll 4: Board Election 2009/Change Constitution". poll.opensolaris.org. Archived from the original on 2009-10-30. Retrieved 2009-11-04.
  18. ^ "Governing Board". OpenJDK. Archived from the original on Jun 6, 2022.
  19. ^ "Governance". Open Source Community. 2 October 2006. Archived from the original on May 2, 2012.
  20. ^ "We strive to be transparent". AlmaLinux Wiki. Archived from the original on Jun 25, 2021. Retrieved 2021-06-25.
  21. ^ "FLOSS Weekly episodes with Simon Phipps". TWiT. Archived from the original on Feb 6, 2022. Retrieved 2021-02-07.