An informal overview of my career and accomplishments can be found on this site’s main page. A more formal overview can be found on my resume or LinkedIn profile.

Writing (selected)

I have a blog, where I have written extensively about a variety of (mostly) computing-related topics, particularly Linux, open source, operating systems, cloud computing, and platform strategy.

These posts are a few years old now, but they’re still highly relevant (and still nicely summarize my worldview):

• Do operating systems still matter?
  (4/17/2009)
• What will be the cloud equivalent of the Linux distro?
  (1/22/2009)
• How package management changed everything
  (7/21/2007)
• Babies, bath water and open platforms
  (1/12/2007)
• “Small pieces loosely joined” and Web 2.0
  (11/13/2005)

Early in my career, I wrote a manifesto. Not everyone can say that.

In August 2015, I published a retrospective called How I came to find Linux that describes, well, how I came to find Linux.

I contributed an essay to the O’Reilly book Open Sources 2.0: The Continuing Evolution called Open source and the commoditization of software.

Speaking (selected)

I delivered the keynote at CommunityOne 2008, the first day of JavaOne 2008. The slides were drawn by Hugh MacLeod a.k.a. Gapingvoid:

Here I am talking about OpenSolaris at LugRadio Live USA 2008.

And here I am announcing ExactTarget’s new Fuel platform with Scott McCorkle at Connections 2012.

Interviews (selected)

Print:

• Stories of Linux: Interview with Ian Murdock on Debian’s Early Days (Linux.com)
  (7/5/2011)
• Sun exec ponders OpenSolaris, Linux (InfoWorld)
  (5/9/2008)
• Sun and a Solaris revival: Talking with Ian Murdock (CNET)
  (10/9/2007)
• Q&A: Sun’s Top Operating System Brass Talk OS Strategy (IT Jungle)
  (8/2/2007)
• Dial M for Murdock (Linux Format)
  (May 2007)
• Companies Join to Promote A Linux Operating System (NY Times)
  (10/12/1999)

Audio:

From The Linux Link Tech Show (5/11/2005)

Books:

Education

I received my B.S. in Computer Science from Purdue University in 1996. I was named an outstanding alumnus in 2011.

From 1997 to 2000, I was at the University of Arizona, where I was a staff programmer and occasional graduate student in the Department of Computer Science.

Publications:

• John H. Hartman, Scott Baker, and Ian Murdock. “Customizing the swarm storage system using agents“, Software: Practice and Experience, Volume 36, Issue 2, 2006.
• Ian Murdock and John H. Hartman. “Swarm: A Log-Structured Storage System for Linux“, Proceedings of the FREENIX Track: 2000 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, 2000.
• John H. Hartman, Ian Murdock, and Tammo Spalink. “The Swarm Scalable Storage System“, Proceedings of the 19th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, 1999.

See also: Google Scholar