Michael Tiemann is a true open source software pioneer. He made his first major open source contribution more than three decades ago by writing the GNU C++ compiler, the first native-code C++ compiler and debugger. His early work led to the creation of leading open source technologies and the first open source business model.
In 1989, Tiemann's technical expertise and entrepreneurial spirit led him to co-found Cygnus Solutions, the first company to provide commercial support for open source software. During his ten years at Cygnus, Tiemann contributed in a number of roles from President to hacker, helping lead the company from fledgling start-up to an admired open source leader. When Cygnus was acquired by Red Hat in 2000, Tiemann became Red Hat's Chief Technical Officer (CTO) before becoming its first Vice President of Open Source Affairs. In that role Tiemann provides technology, strategy, and policy advice to executives in the public and private sectors.
Tiemann graduated from the Moore School at the University of Pennsylvania (Class of 1986) with a BS CSE degree, and later did research at INRIA (1988) and Stanford University (1988-1989).
Tiemann has served on a number of boards that have been instrumental in establishing Open Source as a leading development and commercial practice in the software industry. He joined the board of the Open Source Initiative in 2001 and served as its President from 2005-2012. Tiemann was also a founding board member of the Embedded Linux Consortium, the Eclipse Foundation, and an advisor to the GNOME Foundation. Tiemann provides financial support to organizations that further the goals of software and programmer freedom, including the Free Software Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
He was also a Trustee of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and a founding member of the Board of Advisors for the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (2006-present). Tiemann has also remained active in the Creative Commons community, as both a sponsor of projects and promoter of the cause.
Authored Comments
I first met Toyota engineers back in 1996 when I was part of Cygnus Solutions, selling GNU compiler and debugger support. They mightily impressed me with the story of how they created the SULEV (the super ultra-low emission vehicle) by understanding the precise origin of NxOy compounds and designing their engine control software to eliminate it. They showed me a graph of what an unmanaged engine emits (orders of magnitude higher than SULEV), how Detroit continued to lobby the US Congress to do nothing to lower the allowable limits, and why it was that Toyota, following a belief of continuous daily improvement could not NOT make this obvious improvement to their engines.
I am eager to see Toyota confront this challenge and to prevail using every resource available to achieve continuous daily improvement. And I think it is to their credit that they are willing to seek outside assistance for problems that are orders of magnitude more complex than anything Deming had contemplated back in the 1950s (such as the problem of proof-reading hundreds of millions of lines of software code).
Great news!
Lyle,
Your story proves how much Open Source benefits from exponential participation. I am delighted you were curious enough to learn about open source on your own, and skeptical enough to keep asking questions until you were satisfied. And I am even more delighted that you give some credit to open source for your own discoveries and innovations. (You and your team deserve your share of credit, too!) But I am most delighted that you are doing the important work of proving that every process, every idea is subject to improvement, and that your successes can come back to encourage the open source community to think even bigger about what we can all accomplish if we all choose to really work together--software developers, biodiesel refiners, farmers, muscians--everybody.
I look forward to seeing what's next!