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Harald Welte | |
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| Born | 1979 (age 45–46) |
| Nationality | German |
| Occupation | Programmer |
| Website | http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/ |
Harald Welte, also known asLaForge, is a Germanprogrammer.
Welte is the founder of thefree software projectOsmocom and was formerly involved in thenetfilter/iptables andOpenmoko projects. He is a member of theChaos Computer Club.
Until 2007, Welte was the chairman of the core team responsible for the netfilter/iptables project.[1] He is also credited with writing theUUCP overSSL how-to, and contributions toUser-mode Linux and international encryption kernel projects, among others.
Welte has become prominent for his work withgpl-violations.org, an organisation he set up in 2004[2] to track down and prosecute violators of the GPL, which had been untested in court until then.
Welte was part of Openmoko team, a project to create asmartphone platform using free software.[3] However, in 2007, Welte announced his withdrawal from Openmoko, citing internal friction and demotivation. He continues to contribute as a volunteer to the project.[4]
On 25 July 2008,VIA Technologies appointed Harald Welte as its open source liaison. According to VIA, in his role as open source liaison, Welte will be responsible for helping refine VIA's open source strategy and optimise its support for Linux. Welte will also "assist VIA to develop drivers that are in line with the standards and best practices of Linux kernel development, enhance the quality and public availability of VIA documentation, and improve interaction with the open source development community".[5]
Welte is the founder of the Osmocom project.
On 19 March 2008, theFree Software Foundation (FSF) announced that it had awarded theAward for the Advancement of Free Software for 2007 to Welte,[6] stating that"The awards committee honored both Welte's technical contributions to projects like the Linux kernel and the OpenMoko mobile platform project, and his community leadership in safeguarding the freedom of free software users by successfully enforcing the GNU General Public License in over one hundred cases since the gpl-violations.org project began in 2004."
On 22 July 2008, Welte received theDefender of Rights Open Source Award, presented to him byChris DiBona, who indicated the award was primarily for Welte's work on gpl-violations.org.[7][8]
Contributors to theLinux operating system | |
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| GNU | |
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