OSDL Names Thomas Hanrahan Head of Linux Engineering

BEAVERTON, Ore., Sept. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), a global consortium of leading technology companies dedicated to accelerating the adoption of Linux, today announced the appointment of Thomas Hanrahan as the Lab's new director of Linux engineering. OSDL Lab director Timothy Witham has been promoted to Chief Technology Officer.

Hanrahan, with 30 years of software development experience, joins OSDL from IBM's Linux Technology Center in Beaverton, Oregon where he served as senior program manager in charge of software development and testing. There he oversaw the work of many of IBM's leading Linux kernel developers and sub- maintainers. At OSDL, Hanrahan will manage all of the Lab's engineering, testing and technical professionals worldwide.

OSDL's founding director, Timothy Witham, has been named to a new position as Chief Technology Officer where he will be responsible for guiding the Lab's Linux development strategy and will serve as the Lab's lead on working with the Linux development community. Witham has been involved with Linux and open source software for more than a decade and is a regular attendee at the annual invitation-only Linux Kernel Summit in Ottawa, Canada.

"As our charter and mission expand in advancing Linux globally, we're fortunate to have two accomplished Linux technical experts on our leadership team," said Stuart Cohen, CEO of OSDL. "In the last four years, Tim has assembled a world-class Linux engineering team at OSDL. Tim will build on that work in his new role as CTO. He will focus on the community and serve as the technical conscience of OSDL."

"Tom is a key addition to our group," Cohen continued. "He brings critical skills in managing distributed Linux development teams worldwide and we'll look to him to accelerate the progress we are making with our working groups, testing, and kernel engineering teams."

Prior to managing IBM's Linux Technology Center Kernel Department, Hanrahan was a test manager in the IBM NUMA-Q group. Previously he served for 11 years in software engineering and management roles at Sequent Computer Systems where he was also team lead on Sequent's RAS development organization. Prior to that, he was a technical writer at Intel, focusing on the Ada and C programming languages. Hanrahan holds an M.S. and a B.S. in Engineering from UCLA. Witham has been a user of Linux since 1995. Prior to joining OSDL in 2000, he was the Linux program manager at Intel's Microprocessor Software Laboratories responsible for coordination of technical open source issues and serving as the advocate for open source developers needs. Witham's experience includes more than 18 years working with large-scale commercial computing systems, primarily Linux and Unix-focused. He holds a B.S.E.S from the University of South Florida. About Open Source Development Labs (OSDL)

OSDL -- home to Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux -- is dedicated to accelerating the growth and adoption of Linux. Founded in 2000 by CA, Hitachi, HP, IBM, Intel and NEC, OSDL is a non-profit organization at the center of Linux supported by a global consortium of more than 50 of the world's largest Linux customers and IT industry leaders. OSDL sponsors industry-wide initiatives around Linux in telecommunications, in the enterprise data center and on corporate desktops. The Lab also provides Linux expertise and computing and test facilities in the United States and Japan available to developers around the world. Visit OSDL on the Web at http://www.osdl.org/ . NOTE: OSDL is a trademark of Open Source Development Labs, Inc. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. Third party marks and brands are the property of their respective holders