Jim Gettys
Encyclopedia
Jim Gettys is an American computer programmer at Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent is a global telecommunications corporation, headquartered in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, France. It provides telecommunications solutions to service providers, enterprises, and governments around the world, enabling these customers to deliver voice, data, and video services...

 Bell Labs, USA. Until January 2009, he was the Vice President of Software at the One Laptop per Child project, working on the software for the OLPC XO-1
OLPC XO-1
The XO-1, previously known as the $100 Laptop, Children's Machine, and 2B1, is an inexpensive subnotebook computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries around the world, to provide them with access to knowledge, and opportunities to "explore, experiment and express...

. He is one of the original developers of the X Window System
X Window System
The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...

 at MIT and worked on it again with X.Org
X.Org
X.Org refers to several things related to the X Window System:* X.Org, the organisation in charge of X standards from 1999 * The X.Org Foundation, a community-based foundation which took over X stewardship in 2004...

, where he served on the board of directors. He previously served on the GNOME
GNOME
GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...

 foundation board of directors. He worked at the World Wide Web Consortium
World Wide Web Consortium
The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web .Founded and headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the...

 (W3C) and was the editor of the HTTP/1.1 specification in the Internet Engineering Task Force
Internet Engineering Task Force
The Internet Engineering Task Force develops and promotes Internet standards, cooperating closely with the W3C and ISO/IEC standards bodies and dealing in particular with standards of the TCP/IP and Internet protocol suite...

 through draft standard. Gettys helped establish the handhelds.org community, from which the development of Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 on handheld devices can be traced. He is currently working on bufferbloat
Bufferbloat
Bufferbloat is a phenomenon in a packet-switched computer network whereby excess buffering of packets inside the network causes high latency and jitter, as well as reducing the overall network throughput...

, as a properly working low latency Internet is required for immersive teleconferencing
Telepresence
Telepresence refers to a set of technologies which allow a person to feel as if they were present, to give the appearance of being present, or to have an effect, via telerobotics, at a place other than their true location....

.

Gettys worked at HP
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...

 Labs' Cambridge Research Laboratory. He won the 1997 Internet Plumber of the Year award on behalf of the group who worked on HTTP/1.1. Gettys is one of the keepers of the Flame (USENIX
USENIX
-External links:* *...

's 1999 Lifetime Achievement Award) on behalf of The X Window System Community at Large.

One of his main goals at OLPC was to review and overhaul much of standard Linux software, in order to make it run faster and consume less memory and power. In this context, he has pointed out a common fallacy among programmers today: that storing computed values in memory is preferable to recomputing those values later. This, he claims, is often false on current hardware, given fast CPUs and the long time it takes to recover from a potential cache miss.

He holds a BSc
Bachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...

 degree from MIT in Earth and Planetary Sciences (course 12 — EAPS).

External links

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