Tom Lane (Open Source Software Developer)

Tom Lane is a computer scientist dedicated to Open source software. In a 2000 study, he was cited as one of the leading contributors to Open Source software.

Tom Lane's contributions to Open source include:

Organizer of the Independent JPEG Group (IJG)
Member of the core steering committee of PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL, often simply Postgres, is an object-relational database management system available for many platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, MS Windows and Mac OS X. It is released under the PostgreSQL License, which is an MIT-style license, and is thus free and open source software...
Co-author of the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Specification
Member of the Tagged Image File Format
Tagged Image File Format
TIFF is a file format for storing images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and both amateur and professional photographers in general. As of 2009, it is under the control of Adobe Systems...

(TIFF) advisory committee

Education and academic work

Tom holds a bachelor's degree

Bachelor's degree

A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...

in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....

, 1978 and a Ph.D.

Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....

, 1990.

Tom occasionally lectures at Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....

and other places.

PostgreSQL

Tom Lane is a member of the core PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL, often simply Postgres, is an object-relational database management system available for many platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, MS Windows and Mac OS X. It is released under the PostgreSQL License, which is an MIT-style license, and is thus free and open source software...

development team. He is involved in all aspects of PostgreSQL, including new features, performance improvements, and bug evaluation and fixes.

Independent JPG Group (IJG)

IJG is an informal group that writes and distributes a widely used free library for JPEG

JPEG

In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....

image compression. The IJG is arguably one of the important early open source groups and a major reason why the JPEG image format is a standard.
The IJG develops and maintains libjpeg

Libjpeg

libjpeg is a library written entirely in C which contains a widely-used implementation of a JPEG decoder, JPEG encoder and other JPEG utilities...

, a library written entirely in C which contains a widely-used implementation of a JPEG decoder, JPEG encoder and other JPEG utilities.

PNG

The original specification for the Portable Network Graphics (PNG), version 1.0, was written by Thomas Boutell and Tom Lane, with contributions by many others.

Tom Lane is a Contributing Editor for PNG Specification, Version 1.1.

Works

Humor

In disputing a JPEG patent claim. "The patent describes a three-way symbol classification; the closest analog in JPEG is a two-way classification. If the jury can count higher than two, the case will fail."

In describing the attention to detail of another software company "The Single Unix Spec says that getopt is supposed to be defined by , but I guess reading the spec closely is not a hobby in Redmond..."

In contributing to "The Only Coke Machine on the Internet" "Since time immemorial (well, maybe 1970) the Carnegie-Mellon CS department has maintained a departmental Coke machine which sells bottles of Coke for a dime or so less than other vending machines around campus. As no Real Programmer can function without caffeine, the machine is very popular..."

On idiotic benchmark comparisons "Try to carry 500 people from Los Angeles to Tokyo in an F-15. No? Try to win a dogfight in a 747. No? But they both fly, so it must be useful to compare them... especially on the basis of the most simplistic test case you can think of. For extra points, use *only one* test case. Perhaps this paper can be described as "comparing an F-15 to a 747 on the basis of required runway length".

In Modern Culture

Mentioned in the Doom 3
Doom 3
Doom 3 is a science fiction horror video game developed by id Software and published by Activision. An example of the first-person shooter genre, Doom 3 was first released for Microsoft Windows on August 3, 2004. The game was later adapted for Linux, as well as being ported by Aspyr Media for Mac...

video game's readme file
Partially responsible for the standardization of JPEG as the dominant computer image format on the World Wide Web

External links

JPEG

PNG

Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Specification and Extensions

PostgreSQL

Other

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.