Jon “maddog” Hall is the CEO of OptDyn, LLC and the Board Chair for the Linux Professional Institute. Since 1969, Mr. Hall has been a programmer, systems designer, systems administrator, product manager, technical marketing manager, author and university educator.

Mr. Hall has worked on many different operating systems but concentrated on Unix systems since 1980 and Linux systems since 1994, when he first met Linus Torvalds and correctly recognized the commercial importance of Linux and Free and Open Source Software. Mr. Hall obtained a DEC “Alpha” system for Linus Torvalds and organized a DEC engineering team which helped the Linux community to port Linux to the world’s fastest 64-bit microcomputer. He helped several companies (both large and small) create complete lines of business utilizing Free and Open Source Software and Hardware.

Mr. Hall is the author of numerous magazine and newspaper articles, many presentations and one book, “Linux for Dummies”. He currently writes a blog for Linux Pro Magazine. Mr. Hall has consulted with the governments of China, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Brazil as well as the United Nations and many local and state governments on the use of Free and Open Source Software.

He received his BS in Commerce and Engineering from Drexel University in 1973 and his MS in Computer Science from RPI in 1977.