Leonard H. Tower Jr.

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Leonard H. Tower Jr.
Len Tower wearing League for Programming Freedom and "No Smoking" badges (c. 1996)
Len Tower wearing League for Programming Freedom and "No Smoking" badges (c. 1996)
Born June 17, 1949 (1949-06-17) (age 58)
Astoria, Queens, New York, New York, U.S.
Residence Somerville, MA, U.S., Earth
Nationality American
Fields Activist,
Software designer,
Biologist
Institutions MIT,
Free Software Foundation
Alma mater MIT,
Brentwood HS
Known for GNU diff,
gcc
Notable awards Vigil Honor, Order of the Arrow;
Eagle Scout, Boy Scouts of America

Leonard "Len" H. Tower Jr. (born June 17, 1949) is a hacker and activist in the free software movement, environmentalist, artist, poet, and gardener. An Eagle Scout, Tower was also awarded the Vigil Honor in the Order of the Arrow.[1] In 1971, he received a B.S. in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he held several management roles at The Tech, the student newspaper,[2] and became active in Alpha Phi Omega[3] and other service organizations as he has remained throughout his life. He is well known for his software development and community relations for, and his organization, administration, and support of the GNU Project's Free Software Foundation and the League for Programming Freedom. In addition to being an original coauthor of gcc and GNU diff as used in MediaWiki, Len is an avid cyclist and pedestrian who has never owned a car.[1]

Contents

[edit] GNU Project

As a member of the GNU Project, Tower was one of the founders and an initial director of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) from 1985 through 1997.[4] He was the first full time staff at the FSF, working on the creation of the GNU C compiler (now known as GNU Compiler Collection), rewriting it from an extended dialect of Pascal which was difficult to bootstrap, into portable C, and redesigning parts of the parser, register transfer language generator and definitions, and the VAX machine description.[5] Quoting Richard Stallman in February, 1986:

"Although I have a portable C and Pascal compiler, it has a serious drawback: it is a very large program, and intrinsically cannot be made smaller. It is also very hard to bootstrap.
"The problem is that most of the compiler is written in Pastel, a super-hairy extended Pascal, and it is also the sole compiler for that language. To make it smaller, we must eliminate the hair needed to compile Pastel; then we will not be able to compile Pastel, so it must all be rewritten into C.
"Len Tower, the sole full-time GNU staff person, is working on this, with one or two assistants."[6]

In March 1987, Tower posted Stallman's announcement of the first beta release of gcc.[7]

Tower was also one of the creators of GNU diff, a file comparison utility.[8] Diff has been incorporated into hundreds of other programs, including MediaWiki, where it was "extracted verbatim from analyze.c (GNU diffutils-2.7)."[9]

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Tower spoke at USENIX conferences as the official representative of the FSF.[10] In 1987, the FSF described Tower primarily as a programmer who also did some administrative tasks;[11] he managed mailing lists, newsgroups, and requests for information.[12][13]

[edit] League for Programming Freedom

Tower was an early member of the League for Programming Freedom. Through 1991, Len was one of the league's top two speakers, the other being Richard Stallman.[14]

[edit] Notes and References

  1. ^ a b Tower, Leonard H. (2006) "An autobiography in progress of Leonard (Len) H. Tower Jr.," Art.Net studio web site, accessed 27 September 2006.
  2. ^ The Tech MIT student newspaper masthead, 15 February 1972, page 4.
  3. ^ Len Tower family tree from the Alpha Chi chapter, Section 96, Region 1, of Alpha Phi Omega, membership database accessed 27 September 2006.
  4. ^ Heuer, Karl (July 1997). "GNU's Who". GNU's Bulletin 1 (23). Free Software Foundation. 
  5. ^ Stallman, Richard M. (2001) "Contributors to GCC," in Using and Porting the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) for gcc version 2.95 (Cambridge, Mass.: Free Software Foundation)
  6. ^ Stallman, Richard M. (February 1986). "GNU Status". GNU's Bulletin 1 (1). Free Software Foundation. 
  7. ^ Tower, Leonard (1987) "GNU C compiler beta test release," comp.lang.misc USENET newsgroup posting; see also the gcc release timeline.
  8. ^ Tower, Leonard H., et al. (2001) "AUTHORS" file, revision 1.3, GNU diff and patch utilities (Cambridge, Mass.: Free Software Foundation)
  9. ^ Manske, Magnus, et al. (2002-6) "includes/DifferenceEngine.php," line 1025, from the MediaWiki source code, accessed 27 September 2006.
  10. ^ Smallwood, Kevin C. (30 December 1991) "Updated BOF Schedule for San Francisco USENIX Conference," comp.org.usenix USENET posting; see also Noah Friedman's comments of 19 June 1992.
  11. ^ Rubin, Paul (June 1987). "GNU's Who". GNU's Bulletin 1 (1). Free Software Foundation. 
  12. ^ Tuttle, J.; Chassell, R.; Tower, L. (February 1988). "GNU's Who". GNU's Bulletin 1 (4). Free Software Foundation. 
  13. ^ Goldstein, S.; Chassell, R.; Tower, L. (January 1997). "GNU's Who". GNU's Bulletin 1 (22). Free Software Foundation. 
  14. ^ MacPhee, Spike R. (November 1991). "Speaking Volunteers". Programming Freedom 1 (1). League for Programming Freedom. 

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