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Danese Cooper

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Danese Cooper

Danese Cooper (born January 19, 1959) is a programmer, computer scientist, and advocate of open source software. She has been hired as the Chief Technical Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation where she began work on on February 4, 2010.[1]

Known as the "Open Source Diva" after stints as an open source community builder at Sun Microsystems, Intel, and REvolution Computing,[2] she is currently Treasurer on the board of the Open Source Initiative, which she joined in December 2001.[3] She came to public attention for her work at Sun Microsystems on promoting open source.

Career

After earning a B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles, Cooper was in the Peace Corps and involved in management of the Renaissance Faire in California[citation needed]. She worked on the Options Trading Floor at the Pacific Exchange, leaving to work in a prominent law firm[citation needed]. She then moved to Apple Computer, the first of several jobs in engineering. She worked for six months at Microsoft.

Her job before Sun was at Symantec, working on version 5 of the ACT! personal information manager (ACT! 2000). This was her first practical experience of internally open development methods and Extreme Programming and convinced her of the benefits of open source and open development[citation needed].

At Sun, Cooper created and managed the Open Source Programs Office at Sun from March 1999 until March 2005. She chose the Sun Public License for NetBeans software, helped draft the CDDL for OpenSolaris and worked on the creation of the Sun Industry Standards Source License for TI-RPC, the Joint Copyright Assignment for OpenOffice.org and that program's dual-licensing with the LGPL. She jointly received a Chairman's Award at Sun as part of the team creating the Sun blogspaces at blogs.sun.com[4] and Java.Net.[5]

She ended her employment at Sun in March 2005 and moved to Intel,[6] where she worked as Senior Director of Open Source Strategy for Channel Software Operations.[7] She left Intel early in 2009 and moved to R language startup REvolution Computing based in New Haven, Connecticut, which she left suddenly in October 2009.[8] She joined the Wikimedia Foundation as Chief Technology Officer in February 2010.

Personal

Her father named her after his Alfa Romeo.[9] Cooper knits in public[10]. She is a follower of Indian guru Meher Baba[11].

References

  • Danese Cooper. "Danese Cooper - LinkedIn profile". Retrieved 29 January 2010.
  • Darryl K. Taft (24 March 2009). "Danese Cooper Starts at REvolution as 'Open Source Diva'". EWeek.
  • Stephen Shankland (18 March 2005). "Sun open-source diva departs for Intel". ZDNet.
  • Christian Einfeldt. "Danese Cooper: Reflections of an open source diva". Mad Penguin. Retrieved 21 March 2005. — detailed history of Cooper's time at Sun