Bdale Garbee

Who is Bdale Garbee?

Bdale Garbee is a computer specialist who works with GNU/Linux, particularly Debian. He retired at the end of August 2012 from long service as the Open Source & Linux Chief Technologist at Hewlett-Packard.

Garbee has been a Debian developer since the earliest days of the project in the mid-1990s. He set up the original developer machine named master.debian.org in 1995. He served as a Debian Project Leader for one year, and currently serves as chairman of the Debian Technical Committee.

Garbee has served on the board of directors of Software in the Public Interest, the non-profit organization that collects donations for Debian and many other Free Software projects, since July 29, 2004, and was elected president on August 1, 2006.

Garbee represents the interests of individual members and developers on the board of directors of the Linux Foundation.

In September 2008, he received a "Lutèce d'Or" during the French event Paris Capitale du Libre as the FLOSS personality of the year.

He is also an amateur radio hobbyist, a member of AMSAT, Tucson Amateur Packet Radio and the American Radio Relay League.

The name "Bdale" is an abbreviation of "Barksdale", given in honor of his maternal grandfather, Alfred D. Barksdale.