NewsForge: Kernel Traffic’s Zack Brown, a hero in his own right

“Zack Brown, not to be confused with kernel contributor Zach
Brown, started summarizing collaborations between Linux kernel
hackers prior to each new release a couple of years ago. Since
January 1999 he’s been making those summaries available to the
public under the heading of Kernel Traffic (hosted, until recently,
at linuxcare.com).

“It’s his way of giving back to a community that has offered him
a rich and rewarding tool as Linux.”

“He first learned to program at home on a TRS-80 Color Computer,
the kind that plugged into the TV. He worked for years in a
Microsoft environment — “where each different tool had its own
proprietary binary format, constantly changing to maintain
non-interoperability with its competitors” — which, in the end,
provided a nice contrast to the freedom he finally discovered with
Linux, or Unix rather.”

“The power of Linux is really available with almost any version
of UNIX; but at the time, UNIX was only available as an expensive
commercial product. I remember calling up AT&T and being told
that the single-user license for UNIX on my 386 would be over $900.
At that point I was ready to give up, when someone at school
mentioned Linux.”

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