Jon “maddog” Hall is the Chairman of the Board of the Linux Professional Institute. Since 1969, Mr. Hall has been a programmer, systems designer, systems administrator, product manager, technical marketing manager, author and educator, currently working as an independent consultant.

While not a founding member of LPI, he helped formulate some of the concepts and donated personal money to allow the first 200 tests be tested for psychometrics. Hall has concentrated on Unix systems since 1980 and Linux systems since 1994, when he first met Linus Torvalds and correctly recognized the commercial importance of Linux and Free and open source Software.

He has worked for Western Electric Corporation, Aetna Life and Casualty, Bell Laboratories, Digital Equipment Corporation (Digital), VA Linux Systems, and SGI. He was the CTO and ambassador of the now defunct computer appliance company Koolu. Hall serves or has served on the boards of several companies, and several non-profit organizations, including the USENIX Association.

Hall holds a Master of Science in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Bachelor of Science in Commerce and Engineering from Drexel University.

Technology, Entrepreneurship, Open source, LGBTQ, Computer Science