Jon “maddog” Hall, Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Directors of the Linux Professional Institute, has confirmed his participation as a speaker. Jon has been using and creating products using Free and Open Source Software since 1969 for a wide range of companies and universities. As a college student he relied on software contributed to user groups for his education. After meeting Richard Stallman in 1986, he recognized the GNU project and (later) the Free Software Foundation and its contributions to Unix-like software. In 1994 he met Linus Torvalds met Linus Torvalds, and needing a platform to stimulate research into very large address spaces for the 64-bit Digital Equipment Corporation DEC Alpha, convinced Linus to port the Linux kernel and GNU software to the system. Since then he has promoted Free Software.
The speaker received a B.S. degree in Commerce and Engineering from Drexel University in 1973 and an MSCS from RPI in 1977. He was Department Head of Data Processing at Hartford State Technical College from 1977 to 1980 and taught part-time at Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts, and Daniel Webster College from 1981 to 1983, while working for Bell Laboratories.
The speaker has been a programmer, system administrator, product manager, technical marketing director, technical marketing director, university professor, chief technology officer, CEO and chairman of the board of directors of for-profit companies and non-profit organizations.
He is currently Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Directors of the Linux Professional Institute, a Canadian-based non-profit organization that certifies Linux professionals.