Alan Cox

Do you think Linux would be so popular right now if it didn’t have good network support? And if he did not have the much-needed stability? I think not, and the fact that Linux is exactly how we know it today is a very big merit of the “second person in the team after Linus Torvalds” - Alan Cox.



Now many people know Alan, as a prominent IT figure. But in fact, he is still more a programmer than an orator, although it is difficult for him to refuse to oratorical art. He was born on July 22, 1968 in the city of Solihull, in Great Britain. The first computer of Alan was ZX spectrum 128. The boy got carried away with computers and as we can see, it turned from his childhood fun into his work and became a hobby for his whole life.
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He entered the University of Wales in Swansea (University of Wales, Swansea). At that time there were 3 computers, and it was possible to work on them for 15-20 minutes a day, but this was already very good. Thanks to those teachers who gave him their free time and studied with him in the evenings after work.

While studying at university, he won the ZX81, the first mainstream computer in the UK. By the end of the course, he himself taught the teachers a lot and showed excellent results on the exam.

At the same time, he worked in the gaming world, helping to make Scott Adams game ports for UK computers. This gave him a lot to represent the then IT world. There he created his first computer game.

He then entered the University of Aberystwyth (University of Wales, Aberystwyth). While studying at this university, he was destined to see Linux for the first time. Why did he choose Linux? The fact is that at that time, according to him, he was terribly fond of text games. And Linux could not be better suited to develop its text game AberMUD. The name of the game comes from the name of the university. A team of students worked on the game and as a result they created the first such popular game. The game still has fans, during which time it changed about 20 versions, but there you can still find players there.

It was while studying at Aberystwyth University, while working on a university campus for the first time in history, he installed Linux on a working computer network. After installation, there were many shortcomings and flaws in the system in terms of working with the network. Alan's inquisitive mind and skillful hands began to remedy the situation and eventually he became a member of the Linux community and became one of the main developers of the system.

Linux was not at all sharpened for working with networks in its first versions. Until 93, there was no built-in TCP / IP stack. To correct this situation, a team was created. In fact, the TCP / IP stack was the first major subsystem that was developed almost entirely without Linus (Linus was never strong in networks).

Since 2000, he has worked at Red Hat as a consultant, and his work has helped Red Hat stay on top of the “Linux distribution wave” for many years. For several years (1998-2002), the Red Hat badge was a miniature of Alan’s head profile. Prior to that, he had worked at Cable Online and 3Com Corporation.

Alan supported the Linux 2.2 branch and his own - 2.4, which was usually marked with the letters “ac”, for example “2.4.9-ac”. As you might guess, “ac” is the initials of our hero and “in combination” his nickname. Branch 2.4 was very stable and contained bug fixes. During this period, he probably eclipsed Linus Torvalds in the Linux community.

His role as a person supporting the Linux kernel proved to be very useful for the entire Linux community, as he managed to compensate for Linus' obvious personality problems: “Linus is a good developer, but a terrible engineer,” Cox said in one of his interviews, “I'm sure he I agree with that. ” Alan's huge contribution made it possible for Linux to be ported to home computers. For this, he often worked without sleep for several days in a row. His performance is amazing: he was a man who is worth a dozen developers.

He supported the development of the kernel until 2002. Then resigned. He also participated in the development of GNOME and X.Org.

Now Alan is known more as a free software activist. He has long opposed the use of patents licensing DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and CBDTPA (Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act). These patents prohibit not only copying and distribution of materials protected by copyright, but also the production and distribution of technologies that allow to circumvent the system of protection against illegal copying.

In 2001, a major scandal was associated with the DMCA. Then the Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov directly at the DefCon conference arrested the FBI on charges of hacking into the Adobe electronic document protection system. The fact is that Sklyarov developed the algorithm of the Advanced eBook Processor program, which really allowed to bypass the protection of PDF e-books. At DefCon, he presented a report on the vulnerability of e-books, and in particular, the PDF format. He accompanied all this with examples using the Advanced eBook Processor. And after the end of the conference he was arrested. Despite the fact that in the end he was released on bail, and then completely acquitted, Sklyarov spent several months in a US prison, and this case caused a very big resonance. It was after the arrest of Sklyarov that Cox refused to attend a major Usenix conference, where he was a member of the organizing committee. He also called on all non-US programmers to boycott events in the United States, and the organizers to organize conferences in other countries. “Who is next, speaking at the conference, will be imprisoned for several years in an American prison for not committing anything?” Cox asks in an interview.

For his services, Cox won a number of awards. For example, the LinuxWorld Awards for general achievements in 2001 and the Free Software Award for contributions to the development of the Linux kernel in 2003. He is also a consultant to the British organization Open Rights Group, which is fighting for the abolition of Digital Rights Management (DRM).

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