Advisory Board

Gordon Brooks

CFO, Blue Coat Systems, Inc.

Gordon (“Gordy”) holds an MBA from USC and is a CPA with over twenty years in both public accounting firms and small  to medium-sized high technology enterprises.  Gordy is well known for his ability “to take numbers and make them talk” and helping organizations refine their business model. He was formerly vice president, corporate finance at Palo Alto-based VMWare, Inc.   Prior to his role at VMWare, Gordy spent nine months as SpikeSource’s CFO, working closely with the executive management team to further refine the company’s strategic vision, sales model, and operating model.  Prior to SpikeSource, he was at several high technology companies including BEA and WebTV in domestic, international, and global senior finance roles. 

Mitchell Baker

Chairperson, Mozilla Foundation

Mitchell has been part of the mozilla.org team since its inception in 1998. She wrote the Netscape and Mozilla Public Licenses while Associate General Counsel at Netscape Communications. Mitchell also serves as board member of the Open Source Applications Foundation, where she guides the Open Source Applications Foundation's relations with its community and partners.

Brian Behlendorf

Founder/CTO, CollabNet & Co-Founder, Apache Web Server Project

Brian Behlendorf founded CollabNet with O'Reilly & Associates in July 1999. The company provides tools and services based on open source methods. Before launching CollabNet, Behlendorf was cofounder and CTO of Organic Online, a Web design and engineering consultancy located in San Francisco. During his five years at Organic, Behlendorf helped create Internet strategies for dozens of Fortune 500 companies. During that time, he cofounded and contributed heavily to the Apache Web Server Project, cofounded and supported the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) effort, and assisted several IETF working groups, particularly the HTTP standardization effort. Before starting Organic, Behlendorf was the first Chief Engineer at Wired Magazine, and later HotWired, one of the first large-scale publishing Websites.

Dirk Hohndel

Chief Linux and Open Source Technologist, Intel Corporation

Dirk has been active in the Linux space since its earliest days. Among other roles, he worked as Chief Technology Officer of SuSE Linux AG and as Vice President of The XFree86 Project, Inc. Prior to his position at SuSE, Dirk was Unix Architect at Deutsche Bank, and before that, he was a Senior Software Engineer for AIB Software Corporation and PLATINUM technology. Dirk joined Intel in 2001. He works in the Software and Solutions group and owns Linux and Open Source Strategy, helping the different business groups at Intel in addressing the challenges and opportunities these disruptive technologies are bringing to Intel's business and the IT industry as a whole.

Doc Searls

Senior Editor, Linux Journal

Doc Searls has been called "one of the most respected technology writers in America" by Thomas L. Friedman in The World is Flat. Doc's long and varied professional history includes work as a newspaper and magazine editor, radio personality and marketing executive. Doc is currently the Senior Editor of Linux Journal, the premier Linux monthly and one of the world's leading technology magazines. Additonally, Doc co-authored The Cluetrain Manifesto, which was Amazon's #1 sales & marketing bestseller for 13 months. Moreover, Doc is a fellow with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, where he leads ProjectVRM, a development effort towards vendor relationship management. Doc is a widely read blogger and columnist; his byline has appeared in countless publications including OMNI, Wired, PC Magazine, The Standard, the Sun, Upside, among many others. In August 2005, Doc received the first annual Google O'Reilly Open Source Award for Best Communicator.

Robert "r0ml" Lefkowitz

Vice President, Asurion

r0ml is a software architect and systems designer with over thirty of years of experience. Currently, r0ml is Vice President at Asurion. Before Asurion, he was Chief Scientist at Root Markets. Prior to Root Markets, r0ml was responsible for developing and leading the executive education platform and research agenda at Optaros, a provider of IT business services and solutions. Before Optaros, r0ml was at AT&T Wireless, where he was responsible for data warehousing, application integration, enterprise architecture, software productivity, business process modeling and other enterprise software. He has spent 20 years in various IT roles on Wall Street, including the role of Director of Open Source Strategy for a major international investment bank.

Mårten Mickos

Entrepreneur In Residence, Benchmark Capital

Mårten Mickos Entrepreneur In Residence (EIR) at Benchmark Capital.  Previously Marten served as Senior Vice President of Sun's Database Group.  He joined Sun in 2008 through its acquisition of MySQL AB. As CEO of MySQL for seven years, Mickos helped grow the company from a start-up to the second-largest independent vendor of open source software in the world. Prior to MySQL, Mickos held multi-national CEO and senior executive positions in his native Finland. He holds a MS in technical physics from Helsinki University of Technology.

Tim O'Reilly

Founder and CEO, O'Reilly Media

Tim is a longtime pioneer in the popularization of the Internet and activist for Internet standards and open source software. He led public relations campaigns promoting open standards, organized protests against frivolous software patents, and received InfoWorld's Industry Achievement Award in 1998 for open source advocacy.

Larry Rosen

Partner, Rosenlaw & Einschlag, Technology Law Offices

Lawrence Rosen is both an attorney and a computer specialist. He is founding partner of Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm that specializes in intellectual property protection, licensing and business transactions for technology companies. In addition to this law practice, Larry also served for many years as general counsel and secretary of the non-profit Open Source Initiative (OSI). He currently advises many open source companies and non-profit open source projects including Apache Software Foundation, Python Software Foundation and the Free Standards Group. Larry serves on the board of International Characters, and on the advisory boards of Spike Source, Black Duck Software and JasperSoft. He speaks around the world about open source and open standards. His book, “Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law”, was published by Prentice Hall in 2004. He is currently a Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School.