Christoph Hellwig has been, according to this web page,
"in the top-ten list of commits to both the Linux 2.4 and Linux 2.5
tree". The page also mentions another fascinating piece of news, that he worked for Caldera for at least part of the time he was making those kernel contributions:
"After a number of smaller network administration and programming contracts he worked for Caldera's German development subsidiary on various kernel and userlevel aspects of the OpenLinux distribution."
In 2002, he offered a paper on "Linux-ABI: Support for Non-native Applications" which is described like this:
"The
Linux-ABI project is a modification to the Linux 2.4 kernel that allows
Linux to support binaries compiled for non-Linux operating systems such
as SCO OpenServer or Sun Solaris."
Back in 2002, he was described, in connection with his appearance at the Ottawa 2002 Linux Symposium, like this:
"Christoph Hellwig "Reverse engineering an advanced filesystem "Christoph
Hellwig is employed by Caldera, working on the Linux-ABI binary
emulation modules. In his spare time he cares for other parts of the
kernel, often involving filesystem-related activities."
So,
in short, he was contributing to the kernel and working for Caldera on
Linux/UNIX integration at the same time. His work for Caldera was on
the Linux kernel ("he worked for Caldera's German development
subsidiary on various kernel and userlevel aspects of the OpenLinux
distribution"), and he also did work on his own on the kernel. Did
Caldera know about his freelance contributions, in addition to knowing
about his work for them? What do you think? He used his hch at
caldera.de email address when doing it. All contributions to the kernel
are publicly available anyway. They certainly could have known. As for
his job, his signature on his emails back in 2001 was:
"Christoph Hellwig Kernel Engineer Unix/Linux Integration Caldera Deutschland GmbH".
He used the email address hch at bsdonline.org sometimes too, and here you can see some of his Linux-abi contributions. Here are some of his contributions to JFS, Journaled File System. Yes, that JFS. Here he is credited as sysvfs maintainer, and he confirms it
in this email, writing, "I've run native sysvfs tools under linux, but
as now that I'm Linux sysvfs maintainer I'm looking into implementing
free versions of it."
Here is a list of the operating systems that use or can handle the file system sysvfs:
"sysvfs: UNIX System V; SCO, Xenix, Coherent e21 "operating systems that can handle sysvfs: FreeBSD (rw), LINUX (R), SCO (NRWF)"
Here's
a page listing by author (alphabetically by first name), with his
emails to linux-kernel in June 2003, so he is still contributing.
Here he is listed on the Change log for patch v2.4.17. Here he tells Andrew Morton in 2002 that he will
Slashdot Mirror
Caldera Employee Was Key Linux Kernel Contributor
Christoph Hellwig has been, according to this web page, "in the top-ten list of commits to both the Linux 2.4 and Linux 2.5 tree". The page also mentions another fascinating piece of news, that he worked for Caldera for at least part of the time he was making those kernel contributions:
"After a number of smaller network administration and programming contracts he worked for Caldera's German development subsidiary on various kernel and userlevel aspects of the OpenLinux distribution."
In 2002, he offered a paper on "Linux-ABI: Support for Non-native Applications" which is described like this:
"The Linux-ABI project is a modification to the Linux 2.4 kernel that allows Linux to support binaries compiled for non-Linux operating systems such as SCO OpenServer or Sun Solaris."
Back in 2002, he was described, in connection with his appearance at the Ottawa 2002 Linux Symposium, like this:
"Christoph Hellwig
"Reverse engineering an advanced filesystem
"Christoph Hellwig is employed by Caldera, working on the Linux-ABI binary emulation modules. In his spare time he cares for other parts of the kernel, often involving filesystem-related activities."
So, in short, he was contributing to the kernel and working for Caldera on Linux/UNIX integration at the same time. His work for Caldera was on the Linux kernel ("he worked for Caldera's German development subsidiary on various kernel and userlevel aspects of the OpenLinux distribution"), and he also did work on his own on the kernel. Did Caldera know about his freelance contributions, in addition to knowing about his work for them? What do you think? He used his hch at caldera.de email address when doing it. All contributions to the kernel are publicly available anyway. They certainly could have known. As for his job, his signature on his emails back in 2001 was:
"Christoph Hellwig
Kernel Engineer Unix/Linux Integration
Caldera Deutschland GmbH".
He used the email address hch at bsdonline.org sometimes too, and here you can see some of his Linux-abi contributions. Here are some of his contributions to JFS, Journaled File System. Yes, that JFS. Here he is credited as sysvfs maintainer, and he confirms it in this email, writing, "I've run native sysvfs tools under linux, but as now that I'm Linux sysvfs maintainer I'm looking into implementing free versions of it."
Here is a list of the operating systems that use or can handle the file system sysvfs:
"sysvfs: UNIX System V; SCO, Xenix, Coherent e21
"operating systems that can handle sysvfs: FreeBSD (rw), LINUX (R), SCO (NRWF)"
Here's a page listing by author (alphabetically by first name), with his emails to linux-kernel in June 2003, so he is still contributing.
Here he is listed on the Change log for patch v2.4.17. Here he tells Andrew Morton in 2002 that he will