Russ Nelson

Russell "Russ" Nelson (born March 21, 1958) is an American computer programmer. He was a founding board member of the Open Source Initiative and briefly served as its president in 2005.

Career

In 1983, Nelson co-wrote a MacPaint clone, Painter's Apprentice with Patrick Naughton.^[6] Nelson was the original developer of Freemacs (a variant of Emacs used by FreeDOS).^[7] While attending university, Nelson began developing the collection of drivers later commercially released as the "Crynwr Collection".^[8] In 1991, he founded Crynwr Software, a company dedicated to creating bulk e-mail software, located in Potsdam, New York.^[9][10]

In 1998, Nelson became one of the first group to serve on the Board of Directors of the Open Source Initiative, joining Brian Behlendorf, Ian Murdock and Chip Salzenberg.^[2][11] In February 2005, he became the President of the Open Source Initiative, but resigned a few days later, on February 23, 2005, because a posting on his personal blog was deemed to be racist.^[4][3] Nelson apologized to those who perceived the post, which he withdrew because it "was not well written", as racist, and indicated that he did not believe himself to be politically savvy enough for the role of president.^[3] Six years later, in March 2011, he departed the Board due to term limits on the position.^[12]

In July 2010, Nelson was engaged in making monitors to measure water quality.^[13]

Personal

Nelson is the son of Russell Edward Nelson, a traffic engineer for New York Telephone and veteran of World War II, and Gladys Jacobsen Nelson.^[14] He has one sister.^[14] He attended Baldwin Senior High School from 1972 to 1975 before entering college at Clarkson University.^[8][15] He is a Quaker,^[16] a pacifist,^[17] and a member of the Libertarian Party of the United States.^[5]

References