About OzLabs

Introduction

OzLabs is a group of Free Software developers and their associates, originally formed in Canberra, Australia. The original incarnation of the group is notable for being one of the first commercial labs set up to work on Linux and Linux support. OzLabs is the largest and most respected collection of Free Software developers in Australia. Members of this group are responsible for projects including:

A more complete list is available on the home page.

OzLabs History

Linuxcare

In 1999 US-based company Linuxcare employed Andrew Tridgell, founder of the Samba project and author of rsync, and asked him to establish a Free Software research and development group in Canberra, Australia. Tridgell quickly recruited fellow Australian National University (ANU) researcher and rsync coauthor Paul Mackerras, who was responsible for the PowerPC port of Linux and the Linux implementation of PPP, and fellow Canberra Linux User Group (CLUG) founder Stephen Rothwell, who was the Linux APM maintainer.

Also joining OzLabs in late 1999 were Tim Potter, one of Tridgell's fellow Samba team members, Hugh Blemings, author of gnokii, and Paul `Rusty' Russell, author of the Linux ipchains and netfilter firewalling/packet-filtering software, and founder of linux.conf.au, one of the world's major Linux technical conferences.

Blemings was tasked with establishing the Australian section of Linuxcare's global technical support team and, in early 2000, he hired ANU graduate David Gibson and Apache web server developer Martin Pool, who would later author distcc and Bazaar-ng. Sales Manager extraordinaire Martin Nightingale joined the OzLabs team, and former ANU academic and system administrator Martin Schwenke was hired to provide technical support within the Canberra region.

Soon after this, Linuxcare rounded out its development and professional services team by adding Linux Standard Base developer Chris Yeoh, SPARC Linux maintainer Anton Blanchard, later to be a PowerPC64 Linux maintainer, and Samba team member Luke Leighton. OzLabs also gained its first remote members, both working from Adelaide, Australia: FreeBSD/NetBSD hacker Greg Lehey, author of Vinum, and GNU toolchain hacker Alan Modra. The team was patiently watched over by office administrator Tracy Whatman.

In mid-2000 Blemings became manager of the Linuxcare's Australian operation. Later in 2000 Nightingale left to lead VA Linux's Australian division, and Leighton left OzLabs and returned to the United Kingdom.

Several members of OzLabs lectured or guest lecturered at the Australian National University over the years, adding weight to the ANUs already strong UNIX and Linux curriculum.

Prior to the widespread uptake of broadband internet in Canberra, OzLabs provided a Linux CD downloading and burning service, which gave students and members of the public access to Linux distributions such as Debian, Mandrake and Red Hat, without the tedium of sneaker netting thousands of floppy disks. The CDs were provided in exchange for biscuits, Tim Tams were generally favoured and were sometimes used in late night Tim Tam Slam binges.

In early 2001, after instability at Linuxcare, most OzLabs members took jobs elsewhere and Linuxcare closed its Australian division.

VA Linux, Hewlett Packard, Snap, Canonical, Google

After leaving Linuxcare, OzLabs founder Andrew Tridgell joined Martin Nightingale at VA Linux, along with Martin Pool and Tim Potter. However, approximately 6 months later VA Linux closed its Australian division. Martin Pool and Tim Potter joined Hewlett Packard, while Andrew Tridgell joined Snap. In 2005, Martin Pool took a job with Ubuntu's commercial arm Canonical. In 2012, Martin Pool left Canonical to take a job with Google.

IBM

2001

Within a few months of leaving Linuxcare, most of the OzLabs team (Anton Blanchard, Hugh Blemings, David Gibson, Greg Lehey, Paul Mackerras, Alan Modra, Stephen Rothwell, Rusty Russell, Martin Schwenke, Chris Yeoh) had joined IBM's Linux Technology Center to work on PowerPC Linux and associated projects, with Hugh Blemings as manager.

The team built up a close relationship with other Linux hackers inside IBM, most notably those working on Linux on PowerPC in Austin, Texas and Rochester, Minnesota.

Over the years many of these people have been considered part of the extended OzLabs team, including Ryan Grimm, Olof Johansson, Nathan Lynch, Jack Miller, Milton Miller II, Jake Moilanen, Sonny Rao, Will Schmidt, Joel Schopp, Amos Waterland and Mike Wolf.

2002

Greg Lehey left IBM in mid-2002.

2003

Andrew Tridgell joined IBM's Almaden research team, working from the Canberra office.
The team was officially joined by systems administrator Keith Matthews, a long term IBM systems engineer who had already been helping to support the team's Power hardware.
Jeremy Kerr, who began as an intern hacking on nfsim, also joined and wound up doing many things, mostly kernel hacking, including becoming SPU FS maintainer for the Cell Linux port.
Linux on Power hacker and Yaboot author Benjamin Herrenschmidt also joined, eventually succeeding Paul Mackerras as head Linux on Power maintainer in 2009.

2004

Ben Elliston, a long time GCC/toolchain hacker, joined.
Michael Ellerman joined from IBM Global Services to work on Power kernel.
Kelly Daly (now Kelly Yeoh) also joined from IBM Global Services to work on the kernel.

2005

Andrew Tridgell spent 2005 on a one-year fellowship at OSDL.
Michael Neuling, a kernel and hardware hacker who had worked with Rusty Russell on netfilter, joined.
Tony Breeds, an experienced Linux systems administrator who would turn his hand to kernel hacking and bootloader development, joined the team.

2006

Andrew Tridgell returned from his OSDL fellowship.
Hugh Blemings stood down from managing the team so that he could move back to a technical role, and was replaced by Martin Schwenke.

2007

Mark Nelson, a recent graduate, moved from IBM's Global Business Services to join OzLabs as a kernel hacker.
Ronnie Sahlberg, a Samba, Wireshark and dbench hacker also joined in 2007 to work on clustered Samba with Andrew Tridgell, primarliy CTDB.
Kathy Staples joined the team from IBM's Software Group, where she worked in a pre-sales technical role, to learn new skills and discover the intricacies of some kernel hacking.

2008

Martin Schwenke stood down from managing the team and moved back into a technical role, working with Andrew Tridgell and Ronnie Sahlberg in the Scale-out File Services team.
Abhi Chatterjee joined from the government sector to manage the team.
Kathy Staples left the team to rejoin IBM's Software Group.
Hugh Blemings moved on to Canonical to manage hardware enablement for Ubuntu.

2009

Jeremy Kerr also moved to Canonical.

2010

Ben Elliston moved on to pursue a PhD in renewable energy.
Matt Evans, a hardware and operating system hacker, joined from IBM UK to work on Linux on Power.
Mark Nelson returned to Melbourne, taking up another position at IBM.
Ian Munsie, an ANU Software Engineering graduate, joined the team to work on Linux on Power.
Alexey Kardashevskiy joined from IBM's Russian System and Technology Laboratory to work on Linux on Power.

2011

Amitay Isaacs joined the team to work on Samba - initially Samba 4 and later CTDB.

2012

Matt Evans returned to the UK, taking a job with ARM.
Ronnie Sahlberg moved on to Google.
Andrew Tridgell retired from IBM to work on auto-pilot software.

2013

Alistair Popple joined from the Australian Public Service to work on Linux on Power.
Kelly Yeoh left IBM.
Jeremy Kerr rejoined IBM.
David Gibson left IBM to work at Red Hat.

2014

Stewart Smith joined IBM to work on skiboot and "cause trouble".
Joel Stanley joined IBM from Minelab to work on skiboot.
Cyril Bur joined IBM as a graduate.
Sam Mendoza-Jonas joined IBM as a graduate.
Sam Bobroff joined IBM to work on PowerKVM.
Gavin Shan moved to OzLabs to work on the kernel.
Tony Breeds left IBM to work at Rackspace.
Leonard Low joined IBM to help manage the team.

2015

Daniel Axtens joined IBM as a graduate.
Chris Yeoh sadly passed away.
Rusty Russell left IBM to join Blockstream.
Andrew Donnellan joined IBM as a graduate.
Russell Currey joined OzLabs from IBM Security on the Gold Coast.
Andrew Jeffery joined IBM.
Chris Smart joined IBM.
Daniel Black joined IBM.

2016

Oliver O'Halloran joined IBM as a graduate.
Alastair D'Silva joined IBM.
Balbir Singh joined IBM.
Suraj Jitindar Singh joined IBM as a graduate.
Nick Piggin joined IBM.
Chris Smart left IBM.

2017

Ian Munsie left IBM.
Gavin Shan left IBM to work at Alibaba.
Abhi Chatterjee left IBM to work at Amazon.
Daniel Axtens left IBM to work at Canonical.

2018

Rashmica Gupta joined IBM full time after two internships.
Cyril Bur left IBM to work at ARM.
Balbir Singh left IBM to work at Amazon.

2019

Jordan Niethe joined IBM.
Daniel Axtens rejoined IBM.
Ben Herrenschmidt left IBM to work at Amazon.
Stewart Smith left IBM to work at Amazon.
Sam Mendoza-Jonas left IBM to work at Amazon.
Leonard Low left IBM to work at Amazon.
Suraj Jitindar Singh left IBM to work at Amazon.

2020

Jeremy Kerr left IBM to become a pirate, and then founded Code Construct.
Alistair Popple left IBM to work at NVIDIA 🖕.
Sam Bobroff left IBM.
Daniel Black left IBM to work at MariaDB Foundation.
Oliver O'Halloran left IBM to work at Oracle.

2021

Martin Schwenke left IBM to work at DDN.

2022

Alastair D'Silva left IBM.
Daniel Axtens left IBM to work at Fastly.
Amitay Isaacs left IBM to work at DDN.
Rohan McLure joined IBM.
Ben Gray joined IBM.
Nicholas Miehlbradt joined IBM.
Alexey Kardashevskiy left IBM to work at AMD.

2023

Paul Mackerras retired from IBM.
Mikey Neuling left IBM to join Tenstorrent.
Russell Currey left IBM.
Andrew Jeffery left IBM to join Code Construct.
Anton Blanchard left IBM to work at Tenstorrent.
Jordan Niethe left IBM to work at Nvidia.

Second diaspora

By 2024 the bulk of the group was no longer at IBM.

2024

Rohan McLure left IBM.
Alan Modra retired from IBM.
Ben Gray left IBM.
Michael Ellerman left IBM to work at Tenstorrent.

2025

Joel Stanley left IBM to work at Tenstorrent.
Nicholas Piggin left IBM to work at Tenstorrent.
Keith Matthews left IBM.

Sponsorship

OzLabs proudly sponsored the OzLabs Operating Systems Prize in 2010 at UNSW.