David A. Wheeler
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| David A. Wheeler | |
|---|---|
| Photo of David Wheeler | |
| Born | 1965 (age 58–59) |
| Alma mater | George Mason University |
| Thesis | Fully Countering Trusting Trust through Diverse Double-Compiling (2009) |
| Doctoral advisor | Daniel A. Menascé, Ravi Sandhu |
David A. Wheeler (born 1965) is a computer scientist.[1][2] He is best known for his work on open source software/free-libre software (FLOSS or OSS/FS) and computer security.
Open Source Software
In 2000, Wheeler self-published "Why Open Source Software / Free Software? Look at the Numbers!",[3] a text where he argued that considering FLOSS is justified. According to Google Scholar, this article has been cited over 400 times in other scholarly works [4] and in the 2004 report of the California Performance Review.[5] Wheeler was interviewed about his webpage by Linux.com.[6]
In 2001, Wheeler published a webpage[7] where he measured the source lines of code of the Red Hat Linux distribution version 7.1. By applying conventional cost-estimating techniques, he concluded that it would cost more than a billion United States dollars to develop this distribution by conventional proprietary means. This work has inspired one person to measure other FLOSS systems, the Debian distribution.[8]
In 2006, Wheeler posted "Nearly all FLOSS is Commercial"[9] on his webpage. This is a critical issue in U.S. federal government acquisitions, because the U.S. government has laws and policies that prefer the acquisition of commercial items. He argues that FLOSS is defined as commercial software by the government's own rules, and believes that no one else had clearly articulated that before him.
Other works
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. In 1999 Wheeler released the book-formatted webpage "Secure Programming for Linux and Unix HOWTO".[10] It targeted software developers (instead of security experts) and talked about the specifics of how to develop secure programs, including how to avoid buffer overflows and cross-site scripting (XSS) in widely used programming languages.
Wheeler has also developed a webpage that identifies what he believes to be the most important software innovations.[11] He said that "humankind has been impacted by major new innovations in software technology... but the number of major new innovations is smaller than you might expect". At the end, he was amused that his own criteria for "the most important software innovations" listed only things first implemented as open source software, and nothing that have been created by Microsoft (as he singled out).
External Publications
Besides posting writings on his webpage, Wheeler has had some work published in at least two occasions (none of those related to open source software):
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References
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