Tom Lane (computer scientist)
| Tom Lane | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 18, 1955 Madrid, Spain |
| Residence | U.S. |
| Nationality |  US |
| Fields | Computer Science |
| Alma mater | Carnegie Mellon University |
| Known for | The Independent JPEG Group (IJG) PostgreSQL, Portable Network Graphics (PNG) |
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:
- Organizer of the Independent JPEG Group (IJG)[2]
- Member of the core steering committee of PostgreSQL[3]
- Co-author of the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Specification[4]
- Member of the Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) advisory committee
Contents |
[edit] Education and academic work
Tom holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, 1990.
Tom occasionally lectures at Carnegie Mellon University and other places.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] TIFF
Tom Lane is a member of the Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) advisory committee.
[edit] Works
- Thomas G. Lane, JPEG FAQ
- Thomas G. Lane, PostgreSQL Concurrency Issues
- Thomas G. Lane, User interface software structures
- Thomas G. Lane, Studying Software Architecture Through Design Spaces and Rules
[edit] 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..."
- On idiotic benchmark comparisons "Try to carry 500 people from Los Angeles to Tokyo in an F-15. No? Try to win a dogfight in a 747. No? But they both fly, so it must be useful to compare them... especially on the basis of the most simplistic test case you can think of. For extra points, use *only one* test case. Perhaps this paper can be described as "comparing an F-15 to a 747 on the basis of required runway length".[9]
[edit] In Modern Culture
- Mentioned in the Doom 3 video game's readme file[10]
- Partially responsible for the standardization of JPEG as the dominant computer image format on the World Wide Web
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Rishab Aiyer Ghosh and Vipual Ved Prakash (2000-05-10). "The Orbiten Free Software Survey". http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/769/678. (The Orbiten Free Software Survey)
- ^ Darrel R. Hankerson, Greg A. Harris, Peter Dexter Johnson. Introduction to Information Theory and Data Compression. http://books.google.com/books?id=jCqRwa0T81kC&pg=PA301&lpg=PA301&dq=%22Organizer+of+the+Independent+JPEG+Group%22&source=web&ots=7CNdkKB-nu&sig=K8lasgz6-RfJg7qsBkWpnrl9ZrY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result.
- ^ "PostgreSQL.org website". http://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/.
- ^ Thomas Boutell and Tom Lane. "Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Specification and Extensions". http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/spec/pngspec-index.html.
- ^ "JPEG.org Homepage". 2008-09-14. http://www.jpeg.org/jpeg/index.html. (www.jpeg.org)
- ^ Gillian Law (2002-07-02). "Forgent claims JPEG patent; others cry foul". http://www.networkworld.com/news/2002/0719jpeg.html. Retrieved 2007-09-11. (NetworkWorld article)
- ^ Tom Lane (2004-11-19). "pgsql-hackers forum". http://www.mail-archive.com/pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org/msg52400.html. Retrieved 2007-09-11.
- ^ "The Only Coke Machine on the Internet". http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~coke/history_long.txt.
- ^ "Re: Database performance comparison paper.". http://www.mail-archive.com/pgsql-general@postgresql.org/msg93043.html.
- ^ "Doom 3 Readme File". http://www.nd80usa.net/slicks/doom3docs/htm/readme.htm.
[edit] External links
JPEG
PNG
PostgreSQL
- Great Bridge Developers to Keynote Open Source Database Summit; Project Management, Transaction Processing On the Agenda
- PostgreSQL Core Team
Other
