Simon Phipps

Who is Simon Phipps?

Simon Phipps is the Chief Open Source Officer at Sun Microsystems,

co-ordinating Sun's extensive participation in free and open source

software communities, promoting consistency and best practice and

actively participating in the global conversation they express.

Prior to this appointment he co-founded Sun's pioneering staff

weblog facility at blogs.sun.com. Simon joined Sun in mid-2000.

A computer industry insider of 20+ years standing, Simon has worked

in such hands-on roles as field engineer, programmer and systems

analyst as well as being involved at a strategic level in some of

the world's leading computer companies. Fascinated by the idea of

'action at a distance', he worked with OSI standards in the

eighties, on the first commercial collaborative conferencing

software in the nineties, and helped introduce both Java and XML at

IBM.

Simon has served on the Community Advisory Boards of OpenSolaris and

currently serves on the GNOME, OpenSPARC and OpenJDK communities. He

holds a degree in electronic engineering and is a Chartered Engineer

and Member of the British Computer Society where he is on the

committee of his local branch.