Sam Hocevar | |
|---|---|
 Hocevar in 2007 | |
| Born | Samuel Hocevar (1978-08-05)5 August 1978 (age 47) Forbach, Moselle, France |
| Alma mater | École centrale Paris |
| Occupations |
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| Title | Lead Engine Developer,Dontnod Entertainment |
| Website | sam |
Samuel Hocevar (born 5 August 1978) is a Frenchsoftware andvideo game developer. He was the project leader of theDebian operating system from 17 April 2007 to 16 April 2008, and one of the founding members ofGoatse Security.
Hocevar was born inForbach, Moselle, France. From 1995 to 1997, he took preparatory classes at theLycée Fabert inMetz, Moselle, France.[1] He graduated in 2002 fromÉcole centrale Paris, after receiving the "Award of Information Technology and Communication" from theSNCF as the most promising student in his class.[2] He specialized in electromechanical systems and applied mechatronics, and project management.
From 2005 to 2006, Hocevar was aWikimedia France board member.[3]
Hocevar has been active in theDebian project, and was elected Debian project leader on 17 April 2007.[4][5] Hocevar's Debian leadership platform stated a preference for finishing larger numbers of small projects in succession, echoing the Japanese management philosophy ofKaizen that constant, incremental improvements to a project would generate more gains per unit of time than large single leaps of performance.[6] Hocevar was succeeded by Steve McIntyre on 16 April 2008.
Hocevar has also contributed to theVideoLAN project.[7] He has made large contributions to almost all software of the VideoLAN project, especially toVLC media player andlibdvdcss, since 1998. He is the author of variousfree software programs, such as zzuf, a datafuzzer, andlibcaca, a colorASCII art renderer. He is also the current maintainer of theExtension Language KitScheme interpreter, which has found use in many multimedia applications includingaudio processing.[8] However, as of October 2024, the Elk webpage has been blanked, and Hocevar has not responded to queries about the status of the project or whether the site will be brought back.[9]
Hocevar has worked onreverse engineering andimage processing. Hereverse engineered DVDsubtitles in 2000,[10] and in 2005, it was found that the DRM software which triggered theSony BMG CD copy protection scandal had unlawfully piratedopen source code from the VideoLAN project which Hocevar was involved in authoring.[11][12] Hocevar's experience in image processing includes authoring aCAPTCHA decoding framework called PWNtcha.[13][14][15] PWNtcha was the first CAPTCHA decoder framework to defeat multiple CAPTCHAs and was referred to as the "most famous" CAPTCHA breaker in a 2009Stanford University publication.[16]
Hocevar authored theWTFPL version 2, an extremely liberal,permissive free software license that is recognized by theFree Software Foundation.[17] He has also been cited for his "whimsical"copyleft activism.[18]
Hocevar is part ofGoatse Security, aninformation security working group which revealed a security flaw inAT&T's website, leading to the release of 114,000 email addresses ofAppleiPad users.[19]
Another Goatse member, French hacker Sam Hocevar, said he couldn't answer questions about Auernheimer's arrest.
| Preceded by Anthony Towns | Debian Project Leader April 2007 - April 2008 | Succeeded by Steve McIntyre |
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