Maciej Stachowiak
Encyclopedia
Maciej Stachowiak (ˈmætʃeɪ stəˈhoʊvi.æk; born June 6, 1976) is a Polish American
software developer currently employed by Apple Inc. where he is a leader of the development team responsible for the Safari web browser and WebKit
Framework. A longtime proponent of Open Source
, Stachowiak was involved with the SCWM
, GNOME
and Nautilus
projects for Linux before joining Apple. He is actively involved the development of web standards, and is a co-chair of the World Wide Web Consortium's HTML 5
working group and a member of the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group steering committee.
in 1994, Stachowiak was accepted into MIT where he completed Course 6 - Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
and received both his Sc.B.
and M.Eng.
in 1998.
While at MIT Stachowiak worked on the Rethinking CS101 project, and in 1997 he began the The Scheme Contstraints Window Manager
project with Greg Badros. He also contributed to a paper with the Cognitive & Neural Sciences Office of Naval Research
. Stachowiak's MIT M.Eng. thesis on "Automated Extraction of Structured data from HTML Documents" was indicative of his early interest in web standards and development.
software projects and was employed by Eazel
as one of their lead developers along with Andy Hertzfeld
and Darin Adler
to create the Nautilus file manager
. He was also a developer on the Object Activation Framework (OAF) for the GNOME
desktop environment
from 1999-2001. In 1999, he became a maintainer for the Scheme interpreter for Guile
. During his employment at Eazel, Stachowiak also contributed to Eye of GNOME
, GNOME Libs, Gravevine, GnoP, and was a Developer on Medusa, Bonobo, GNOME VFS
. Stachowiak was also a member of GNOME Foundation
board of directors. During this time, Eazel was profiled in Fortune magazine and Stachowiak was asked why he had decided to join Eazel. "It seemed like a borderline-crazy business plan," observed Maciej Stachowiak, who is one year out of MIT. "But I said, 'Sure, I'll work on it.'" He was laughing as he said this, but his colleagues fidgeted uncomfortably. Two months later, Eazel closed its doors, laying off its entire staff, including Stachowiak.
, Don Melton, Darin Adler
, John Sullivan, Ken Kocienda, and Stachowiak) and Netscape/Mozilla Firefox
alumni David Hyatt joined Apple's Safari team in June 2001. On June 13, 2002, Stachowiak announced on a mailing list that Apple was releasing JavaScriptCore, a framework for Mac OS X that was based on KDE's JavaScript engine. Through the WebKit project, JavaScriptCore has since evolved into SquirrelFish Extreme, a JavaScript engine that compiles JavaScript into native machine code. On June 6, 2005, Webkit was made open source (which was coincidentally and not intentionally Stachowiak's birthday).
and Opera Software
in a proposal that the new HTML working group of the W3C adopt the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group
’s HTML5 as the starting point of its work. On 9 May 2007, the new HTML working group resolved to do that. In May 2009, Stachowiak co-authored the W3C HTML Design Principles for HTML5, one of his first major documentation projects for the W3C. As of 27 August 2009, Stachowiak has co-chaired the World Wide Web Consortium
's HTML Working Group along with IBM
's Sam Ruby
and Microsoft
's Paul Cotton.
's Acid2
test. Stachowiak reported on the WebKit blog on March 26, 2008 that webkit had passed 100/100 on the Acid3
test, making Safari the first browser to pass. In September 2008, it was reported that "WebKit is the first browser engine to fully pass Acid3," by developer Stachowiak in a post to the WebKit blog.
, Poland
to Anna and Grzegorz Stachowiak, both of whom were educated as engineers in Poland. When martial law
was declared in Poland, Maciej's father Grzegorz and other members of the Solidarity movement
were arrested and incarcerated on December 13, 1981. After Grzegorz was released in November 1982, Stachowiak's family fled Poland and entered the United States seeking political asylum
. They were granted American citizenship a short time later. Maciej's younger sister, Agnieszka Stachowiak, attended MIT for her undergraduate and Ph.D., and is currently a faculty member at MIT. The pseudonym, "othermaciej" was acquired when Apple’s WebKit team decided to use freenode
as the home for the #webkit irc channel, and Maciej Cegłowski was already using the irc nick "maciej".
Polish American
A Polish American , is a citizen of the United States of Polish descent. There are an estimated 10 million Polish Americans, representing about 3.2% of the population of the United States...
software developer currently employed by Apple Inc. where he is a leader of the development team responsible for the Safari web browser and WebKit
WebKit
WebKit is a layout engine designed to allow web browsers to render web pages. WebKit powers Google Chrome and Apple Safari and by October 2011 held over 33% of the browser market share between them. It is also used as the basis for the experimental browser included with the Amazon Kindle ebook...
Framework. A longtime proponent of Open Source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
, Stachowiak was involved with the SCWM
Scwm
Scwm or Scheme Constraints Window Manager is a window manager for the X Window System. Its main features are dynamic configurability and programmability via a language based on GNU Guile and the embedded arithmetic Cassowary constraint solver. The primary developers were Greg Badros and Maciej...
, 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...
and Nautilus
Nautilus (file manager)
Nautilus is the official file manager for the GNOME desktop. The name is a play on words, evoking the shell of a nautilus to represent an operating system shell. Nautilus replaced Midnight Commander in GNOME 1.4 and was the default from version 2.0 onwards....
projects for Linux before joining Apple. He is actively involved the development of web standards, and is a co-chair of the World Wide Web Consortium's HTML 5
HTML 5
HTML5 is a language for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web, and is a core technology of the Internet originally proposed by Opera Software. It is the fifth revision of the HTML standard and is still under development...
working group and a member of the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group steering committee.
Education
After graduating from East High School (Rochester, New York)East High School (Rochester, New York)
East High School is a public high school serving the seventh through twelfth grade in Rochester, NY and is part of the Rochester City School District The Principal is Mr. Anibal Soler.-History:...
in 1994, Stachowiak was accepted into MIT where he completed Course 6 - Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department
The Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at MIT offers academic programs leading to the S.B., S.M., M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees. Its faculty conducts research in Biomedical Engineering, Materials Science, Artificial Intelligence, Nanotechnology, Operations Research and many other...
and received both his Sc.B.
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...
and M.Eng.
Master of Engineering
A Master of Engineering or Master of Technology or Master of Science in Engineering A Master of Engineering (Magister in Ingeniaria) (abbreviated M.Eng., ME or MEng) or Master of Technology (abbreviated M.Tech. or MTech) or Master of Science in Engineering A Master of Engineering (Magister in...
in 1998.
While at MIT Stachowiak worked on the Rethinking CS101 project, and in 1997 he began the The Scheme Contstraints Window Manager
Scwm
Scwm or Scheme Constraints Window Manager is a window manager for the X Window System. Its main features are dynamic configurability and programmability via a language based on GNU Guile and the embedded arithmetic Cassowary constraint solver. The primary developers were Greg Badros and Maciej...
project with Greg Badros. He also contributed to a paper with the Cognitive & Neural Sciences Office of Naval Research
Office of Naval Research
The Office of Naval Research , headquartered in Arlington, Virginia , is the office within the United States Department of the Navy that coordinates, executes, and promotes the science and technology programs of the U.S...
. Stachowiak's MIT M.Eng. thesis on "Automated Extraction of Structured data from HTML Documents" was indicative of his early interest in web standards and development.
Eazel
From 1999-2001, Stachowiak contributed to various LinuxLinux
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...
software projects and was employed by Eazel
Eazel
Eazel was a software company based in Mountain View, California from 1999 to 2001.The enterprise was staffed with former employees of Apple Computer, Netscape, Be Inc., Linuxcare, Microsoft, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems, among others. Mike Boich was CEO; Bud Tribble was VP of Engineering; Andy...
as one of their lead developers along with Andy Hertzfeld
Andy Hertzfeld
Andy Hertzfeld is a computer scientist who was a member of the original Apple Macintosh development team during the 1980s. After buying an Apple II in January 1978, he went to work for Apple Computer from August 1979 until March 1984, where he was a designer for the Macintosh system software...
and Darin Adler
Darin Adler
Darin Adler was the technical lead for Apple Computer's System 7 operating system release. During 1985–1987 he worked for ICOM Simulations as primary developer of the MacVenture series of games, including Shadowgate. Adler went on to work at General Magic and Eazel., he is the engineering manager...
to create the Nautilus file manager
Nautilus (file manager)
Nautilus is the official file manager for the GNOME desktop. The name is a play on words, evoking the shell of a nautilus to represent an operating system shell. Nautilus replaced Midnight Commander in GNOME 1.4 and was the default from version 2.0 onwards....
. He was also a developer on the Object Activation Framework (OAF) for 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...
desktop environment
Desktop environment
In graphical computing, a desktop environment commonly refers to a style of graphical user interface derived from the desktop metaphor that is seen on most modern personal computers. These GUIs help the user in easily accessing, configuring, and modifying many important and frequently accessed...
from 1999-2001. In 1999, he became a maintainer for the Scheme interpreter for Guile
GNU Guile
GNU Guile is an interpreter/virtual machine for the Scheme programming language. It was first released in 1993. Guile includes modularized extensions for POSIX system calls, APL array functionality, and others packaged as an object library...
. During his employment at Eazel, Stachowiak also contributed to Eye of GNOME
Eye of GNOME
Eye of GNOME is the official image viewer for the GNOME desktop environment. Unlike some other image viewers, Eye of GNOME will only display images...
, GNOME Libs, Gravevine, GnoP, and was a Developer on Medusa, Bonobo, GNOME VFS
GNOME VFS
GnomeVFS is short for GNOME Virtual File System. It provides an abstraction layer for the reading, writing and execution of files. It was primarily used by the Nautilus file manager and other GNOME applications before GNOME 2.22....
. Stachowiak was also a member of GNOME Foundation
GNOME Foundation
The GNOME Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, coordinating the efforts in the GNOME project.-Purpose:...
board of directors. During this time, Eazel was profiled in Fortune magazine and Stachowiak was asked why he had decided to join Eazel. "It seemed like a borderline-crazy business plan," observed Maciej Stachowiak, who is one year out of MIT. "But I said, 'Sure, I'll work on it.'" He was laughing as he said this, but his colleagues fidgeted uncomfortably. Two months later, Eazel closed its doors, laying off its entire staff, including Stachowiak.
Apple Inc.
After the closure of Eazel, most of the remaining senior engineers (including Bud TribbleBud Tribble
Guy L. "Bud" Tribble, MD, PhD, is Vice President of Software Technology at Apple Inc. Tribble served as the manager of the original Macintosh software development team where he helped to design the Mac OS and user interface. He was among the founders of NeXT, Inc., serving as NeXT's vice...
, Don Melton, Darin Adler
Darin Adler
Darin Adler was the technical lead for Apple Computer's System 7 operating system release. During 1985–1987 he worked for ICOM Simulations as primary developer of the MacVenture series of games, including Shadowgate. Adler went on to work at General Magic and Eazel., he is the engineering manager...
, John Sullivan, Ken Kocienda, and Stachowiak) and Netscape/Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...
alumni David Hyatt joined Apple's Safari team in June 2001. On June 13, 2002, Stachowiak announced on a mailing list that Apple was releasing JavaScriptCore, a framework for Mac OS X that was based on KDE's JavaScript engine. Through the WebKit project, JavaScriptCore has since evolved into SquirrelFish Extreme, a JavaScript engine that compiles JavaScript into native machine code. On June 6, 2005, Webkit was made open source (which was coincidentally and not intentionally Stachowiak's birthday).
W3C Standards Participation
Stachowiak wrote on behalf of Apple along with members of the Mozilla FoundationMozilla Foundation
The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that exists to support and provide leadership for the open source Mozilla project. The organization sets the policies that govern development, operates key infrastructure and controls trademarks and other intellectual property...
and Opera Software
Opera Software
Opera Software ASA is a Norwegian software company, primarily known for its Opera family of web browsers with over 220 million users worldwide. Opera Software is also involved in promoting Web standards through participation in the W3C. The company has its headquarters in Oslo, Norway and is...
in a proposal that the new HTML working group of the W3C adopt the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group
Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group
The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group is a community of people interested in evolving HTML and related technologies. The WHATWG was founded by individuals from Apple, the Mozilla Foundation and Opera Software in 2004. Since then, the editor of the WHATWG specifications, Ian...
’s HTML5 as the starting point of its work. On 9 May 2007, the new HTML working group resolved to do that. In May 2009, Stachowiak co-authored the W3C HTML Design Principles for HTML5, one of his first major documentation projects for the W3C. As of 27 August 2009, Stachowiak has co-chaired 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...
's HTML Working Group along with IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
's Sam Ruby
Sam Ruby
Sam Ruby is a prominent software developer who has made significant contributions to many of the Apache Software Foundation's open source software projects, and to the standardization of web feeds via his involvement with the Atom web feed standard and the feedvalidator.org web service.He currently...
and Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's Paul Cotton.
Web Standards Project Participation
WebKit, the underpinnings of Safari, was made open source on June 6, 2005. When Safari was run with this latest version of WebKit, it passed the Web Standards ProjectWeb Standards Project
The Web Standards Project is a group of professional web developers dedicated to disseminating and encouraging the use of the web standards recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium, along with other groups and standards bodies....
's Acid2
Acid2
Acid2 is a test page published and promoted by the Web Standards Project to expose web page rendering flaws in web browsers and other applications that render HTML. Named after the acid test for gold, it was developed in the spirit of Acid1, a relatively narrow test of compliance with the Cascading...
test. Stachowiak reported on the WebKit blog on March 26, 2008 that webkit had passed 100/100 on the Acid3
Acid3
Acid3 test is a web test page from the Web Standards Project that checks a web browser's compliance with elements of various web standards, particularly the Document Object Model and JavaScript....
test, making Safari the first browser to pass. In September 2008, it was reported that "WebKit is the first browser engine to fully pass Acid3," by developer Stachowiak in a post to the WebKit blog.
Family and Personal Life
Maciej Stachowiak was born in KoszalinKoszalin
Koszalin ; is the largest city of Middle Pomerania in north-western Poland. It is located 12 km south of the Baltic Sea coast. Koszalin is also a county-status city and capital of Koszalin County of West Pomeranian Voivodeship since 1999...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
to Anna and Grzegorz Stachowiak, both of whom were educated as engineers in Poland. When martial law
Martial law in Poland
Martial law in Poland refers to the period of time from December 13, 1981 to July 22, 1983, when the authoritarian government of the People's Republic of Poland drastically restricted normal life by introducing martial law in an attempt to crush political opposition to it. Thousands of opposition...
was declared in Poland, Maciej's father Grzegorz and other members of the Solidarity movement
History of Solidarity
The history of Solidarity , a Polish non-governmental trade union, begins in August 1980, at the Lenin Shipyards at its founding by Lech Wałęsa and others. In the early 1980s, it became the first independent labor union in a Soviet-bloc country...
were arrested and incarcerated on December 13, 1981. After Grzegorz was released in November 1982, Stachowiak's family fled Poland and entered the United States seeking political asylum
Right of asylum
Right of asylum is an ancient juridical notion, under which a person persecuted for political opinions or religious beliefs in his or her own country may be protected by another sovereign authority, a foreign country, or church sanctuaries...
. They were granted American citizenship a short time later. Maciej's younger sister, Agnieszka Stachowiak, attended MIT for her undergraduate and Ph.D., and is currently a faculty member at MIT. The pseudonym, "othermaciej" was acquired when Apple’s WebKit team decided to use freenode
Freenode
freenode, formerly known as Open Projects Network, is an IRC network used to discuss peer-directed projects. Their servers are all accessible from the domain name [irc://chat.freenode.net chat.freenode.net], which load balances connections by using the actual servers in rotation...
as the home for the #webkit irc channel, and Maciej Cegłowski was already using the irc nick "maciej".
External links
- Surfin' Safari - a weblog dedicated to discussing WebKit development, by various members of the WebKit team