Tom Lane (computer scientist)

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Tom Lane
Born(1955-09-18)September 18, 1955
Madrid, Spain
Nationality US
Alma materCarnegie Mellon University
Known forThe Independent JPEG Group (IJG)
PostgreSQL, Portable Network Graphics (PNG)
Scientific career
FieldsComputer Science

Tom Lane is a computer scientist dedicated to Open source software. In a 2000 study, he was cited as one of the leading contributors to Open Source software.[1]

Tom Lane's contributions to Open source include:


Education and academic work

Tom holds a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, 1978 and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, 1990.

Tom occasionally lectures at Carnegie Mellon University and other places.

PostgreSQL

Tom Lane is a member of the core PostgreSQL development team. He is involved in all aspects of PostgreSQL, including new features, performance improvements, and bug evaluation and fixes.

Independent JPG Group (IJG)

IJG is an informal group that writes and distributes a widely used free library for JPEG image compression. The IJG is arguably one of the important early open source groups and a major reason why the JPEG image format is a standard.

"Probably the largest and most important contribution however was the work of the Independent JPEG Group (IJG), and Tom Lane in particular. Their Open Source software implementation, as well as being one of the major Open Source packages was key to the success of the JPEG standard and was incorporated by many companies into a variety of products such as image editors and Internet browsers."[5]

The IJG develops and maintains libjpeg, a library written entirely in C which contains a widely-used implementation of a JPEG decoder, JPEG encoder and other JPEG utilities.

PNG

The original specification for the Portable Network Graphics (PNG), version 1.0, was written by Thomas Boutell and Tom Lane, with contributions by many others.

Tom Lane is a Contributing Editor for PNG Specification, Version 1.1.

TIFF

Tom Lane is a member of the Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) advisory committee.


Works

Humor

  • In disputing a JPEG patent claim. "The patent describes a three-way symbol classification; the closest analog in JPEG is a two-way classification. If the jury can count higher than two, the case will fail."[6]
  • In describing the attention to detail of another software company "The Single Unix Spec says that getopt() is supposed to be defined by <unistd.h>, but I guess reading the spec closely is not a hobby in Redmond..."[7]
  • In contributing to "The Only Coke Machine on the Internet"[8] "Since time immemorial (well, maybe 1970) the Carnegie-Mellon CS department has maintained a departmental Coke machine which sells bottles of Coke for a dime or so less than other vending machines around campus. As no Real Programmer can function without caffeine, the machine is very popular..."

In Modern Culture

  • Mentioned in the game "Doom 3" readme file[9]
  • Partially responsible for the standardization of JPEG as the dominant computer image format on the World Wide Web

References

  1. ^ Rishab Aiyer Ghosh and Vipual Ved Prakash (2000-05-10). "The Orbiten Free Software Survey". {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) (The Orbiten Free Software Survey)
  2. ^ Darrel R. Hankerson, Greg A. Harris, Peter Dexter Johnson. "Introduction to Information Theory and Data Compression".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ "PostgreSQL.org website".
  4. ^ Thomas Boutell and Tom Lane. "Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Specification and Extensions".
  5. ^ "JPEG.org Homepage". 2008-09-14. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) (www.jpeg.org)
  6. ^ Gillian Law (2002-07-02). "Forgent claims JPEG patent; others cry foul". Retrieved 2007-09-11. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) (NetworkWorld article)
  7. ^ Tom Lane (2004-11-19). "pgsql-hackers forum". Retrieved 2007-09-11. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  8. ^ "The Only Coke Machine on the Internet".
  9. ^ "Doom 3 Readme File".

See also

External links

JPEG

PNG

PostgreSQL

Other

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