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Simon Phipps

Currently an independent consultant, computer industry veteran Simon Phipps has engaged at a strategic level in the world’s leading technology companies. He has worked in roles such as field engineer, programmer and systems analyst, as well as run a software publishing company. He worked with OSI standards in the 80s, on collaborative conferencing software in the 90s, and helped introduce both Java and XML at IBM. A Director of the global Open Source Initiative and of the UK's Open Rights Group, he takes an active interest in digital liberty and software freedom and is a widely read thought-leader with a regular column on ComputerWorldUK.

He spent a decade at Sun Microsystems where he helped pioneer Sun’s employee blogging, social media and community engagement programmes. In 2005 he was appointed Chief Open Source Officer at Sun Microsystems, co-ordinating Sun’s extensive participation in Free and Open Source software communities until he left in 2010. In that role he oversaw the conversion to Free software of the Java platform, Solaris UNIX, the SPARC architecture and the rest of Sun’s portfolio, all under open source licenses. An outspoken advocate of the value of Open Document Format (ODF) for businesses and governments, he has been an advisor to local and national government agencies across Europe, the Pacific Rim and Latin America as they have devised and implemented strategies around Free and Open Source software.

He holds a degree in electronic engineering and is a Fellow of the British Computer Society. His personal home page and blog is http://webmink.com

 

webmink's blog

Blast from the past

Posted by webmink on January 23, 2012 at 3:19 PM EST

It's been two years since I posted here last, but life has been busy with open source all the same.

Days In The Sun Over

Posted by webmink on March 9, 2010 at 7:06 AM EST

After nearly 10 years at Sun, and 5 years as Chief Open Source Officer, I have now left Sun. You can read my reflections on those years on my new personal blog (to which you may wish to subscribe).

A JCK for OpenJDK

Posted by webmink on August 9, 2007 at 10:58 PM EDT
My comments are over on my "real" blog, but I felt today was a day to share with java.net :-)

Welcome, IT Conversations Listeners

Posted by webmink on July 4, 2007 at 6:45 PM EDT

I'm interviewed today on IT Conversations and the blog links take listeners to some less used places in my blog-o-rama, so this is by way of links to the right places - see my aggregator and my work blog where most of the action happens!

JavaOne Bloggers Party

Posted by webmink on May 5, 2007 at 7:15 PM EDT

If you are in San Francisco next week and you have a blog, you are invited to the Java Bloggers Beer Bash at ,A HREF="http://www.thirstybear.com/">the Thirsty Bear on Wednesday evening. It's co-located with the Open Source unBOF and I believe this year we'll even be providing a little food. 6pm onwards, see you there.

Reserve Seats at JavaOne

Posted by webmink on April 19, 2007 at 1:35 PM EDT

I'm just sitting on a preparatory call for JavaOne, and someone mentioned that people with a full conference pass can actually reserve a seat at the technical sessions. Just go use the Schedule Builder and reserve your places!

Thoughts on Open Sourcing Sun's Java Implementations

Posted by webmink on August 18, 2006 at 10:18 PM EDT

For the last few months I've been writing an occasional series on the issues surrounding open sourcing Sun's Java implementations over on my other blog. Realising there are plenty of people on java.net who never get over there, here's a summary of the story so far.

Bloggers, Beer and JavaOne 2006

Posted by webmink on May 10, 2006 at 9:22 PM EDT

As I mentioned yesterday on my other blog,I have just confirmed with the folks at the Thirsty Bear that we can have our annual JavaOne Bloggers Gathering there.

The Java Up-tick

Posted by webmink on November 9, 2005 at 8:37 PM EST

I just got off stage at JavaOne Japan, where I was talking about Open Source - the philosophy, the community, the reality. After the talk I was asked how important the union of open source and Java could be.

Sun's Java EE Implementation Open Source

Posted by webmink on June 27, 2005 at 12:05 PM EDT

I was privileged this morning to be the Sun executive doing the morning news call for the world's press at 7:15am here in San Francisco, and thus I had the pleasure of being the one to announce that Sun's implementation of a Java Application Server, Java System Application Server Platform Edition 9.0, is now open