User:Silentcoder

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A.J. "silentcoder" Venter is a free and open-source software developer, poet and writer from South Africa.

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[edit] Current Projects

As of January 2007 Venter heads up his own consulting firm in Cape Town called OutKast I.T. Solutions C.C. Venter's best known active project is OutKafe, widely considered to be a market leader in the cybercafe management software industry, it was the first (then called direqcafe) well maintained cybercafe management tool with support for LTSP. He is also an active contributor to lazarus and in a smaller degree to several other projects.

[edit] OpenLab

Venter is best known for his work as the Chief Software Architect of OpenLab International, and in particular as lead developer of the OpenLab GNU/Linux distribution, a position he held from November 2001 until resigning in December 2007, citing personal growth reasons. Other projects by Venter for OpenLab included tappytux and openbook.

[edit] Speaking and community involvement

He is a well-known free software architect and frequently speaks at international and local events including:

Venter is a member of OFSET (the organisation for free software in education and teaching) and a member of the OFSET council, holding the position of Vice President for Sub-Saharan Africa. He is also a member of the free software foundation.

[edit] Writing

Venter is an avid writer maintaining a daily blog (http://silentcoder.co.za). He published a collection of poems under the title [not included]. He frequently writes technical or advocacy articles for a variety of publications including tectonic and linuxgazette both online and in print.

[edit] Philosophy and ethics

Venter is an outspoken critic of the open-source movements 'pragmatic' approach, subscribing instead to the ethical motivation for free software as espoused by Richard Stallman, however he is nevertheless congenially disposed to the open-source movement and remains a personal friend of Eric Raymond, having in fact been quoted in Raymond's groundbreaking paper homesteading the noosphere (part 3 of The cathedral and the bazaar).