Miguel de Icaza
Encyclopedia
Miguel de Icaza is a Mexican
free software
programmer, best known for starting the GNOME
and Mono
projects.
and studied at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México (UNAM) but never received a degree. He came from a family of scientists in which his father is a physicist and his mother a biologist. He started writing free software in 1992.
file manager, a text-mode file manager. He was also one of the early contributors to Wine project
.
He worked with David Miller on the Linux SPARC
port and wrote several of the video and network drivers in the port as well as the libc ports to the platform. They both later worked on extending Linux for MIPS to run on SGI's Indy computers and wrote the original X drivers for the system. With Ingo Molnar he wrote the original software implementation of RAID-1 and RAID-5 drivers of the Linux kernel.
In summer of 1997, he was interviewed by Microsoft
for a job in the Internet Explorer Unix
team (to work on a SPARC
port), but lacked the university degree required to obtain a work H-1B visa
. He declared in an interview that he tried to persuade his interviewers to free the IE code even before Netscape did with their own browser.
project with Federico Mena
in August 1997 to create a completely free desktop environment and component model for Linux
and other Unix-like
operating systems. Earlier, de Icaza had created the Midnight Commander
file manager and worked on the Linux kernel
. He also created the GNOME spreadsheet program, Gnumeric
.
In 1999, de Icaza, along with Nat Friedman
, co-founded Helix Code, a GNOME-oriented free software company that employed a large number of other GNOME hackers. In 2001, Helix Code, later renamed Ximian
, announced the Mono
Project, to be led by de Icaza, with the goal to implement Microsoft
's new .NET
development platform on Linux
and Unix-like
platforms. In August 2003, Ximian was acquired by Novell, Inc. There, de Icaza was Vice President
of Developer Platform.
In May 2011, de Icaza started Xamarin
to replace MonoTouch and Mono for Android after Novell, Inc. was bought by Attachmate
and the projects were abandoned. However, shortly afterwards Xamarin
and Novell, Inc. reached an agreement where Xamarin took over the development and sales of these products.
and free software community
.
He has also been a long time advocate of using Mono
- a free software implementation of Microsoft's .NET Framework
- in GNOME. This has raised much disagreement due to the patents that Microsoft holds on, and related to, the .NET Framework.
1999 Award for the Advancement of Free Software, the MIT
Technology Review
Innovator of the Year Award 1999, and was named one of Time
magazine's 100 innovators for the new century in September 2000.
In early 2010 he received a Microsoft MVP
Award.
In March 2010, he was named as the fifth in the "Most Powerful Voices in Open Source".
s in the 2001 motion pictures
Antitrust
and The Code.
He married Brazil
ian Maria Laura Soares da Silva (now Maria Laura de Icaza) in 2003.
De Icaza is critical of the actions of the state of Israel towards the Palestinians in the Middle East and has blogged about Israel being a "terrorist state", echoing the same statements made by Noam Chomsky
.
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
programmer, best known for starting the GNOME
GNOME
GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...
and Mono
Mono (software)
Mono, pronounced , is a free and open source project led by Xamarin to create an Ecma standard compliant .NET-compatible set of tools including, among others, a C# compiler and a Common Language Runtime....
projects.
Early years
Miguel de Icaza was born in Mexico CityMexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
and studied at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México (UNAM) but never received a degree. He came from a family of scientists in which his father is a physicist and his mother a biologist. He started writing free software in 1992.
Early software career
One of the earliest pieces of software he wrote for Linux was the Midnight commanderMidnight Commander
GNU Midnight Commander is a free cross-platform orthodox file manager and a clone of Norton Commander originally created by Miguel de Icaza.Midnight Commander is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.-Design:...
file manager, a text-mode file manager. He was also one of the early contributors to Wine project
Wine (software)
Wine is a free software application that aims to allow computer programs written for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems. Wine also provides a software library, known as Winelib, against which developers can compile Windows applications to help port them to Unix-like...
.
He worked with David Miller on the Linux SPARC
SPARC
SPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems and introduced in mid-1987....
port and wrote several of the video and network drivers in the port as well as the libc ports to the platform. They both later worked on extending Linux for MIPS to run on SGI's Indy computers and wrote the original X drivers for the system. With Ingo Molnar he wrote the original software implementation of RAID-1 and RAID-5 drivers of the Linux kernel.
In summer of 1997, he was interviewed by Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
for a job in the Internet Explorer Unix
Internet Explorer for UNIX
Internet Explorer for UNIX was a proprietary graphical web browser that was available free of charge and produced by Microsoft for use in the X Window System on Solaris or HP-UX...
team (to work on a SPARC
SPARC
SPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems and introduced in mid-1987....
port), but lacked the university degree required to obtain a work H-1B visa
H-1B visa
The H-1B is a non-immigrant visa in the United States under the Immigration and Nationality Act, section 101. It allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations...
. He declared in an interview that he tried to persuade his interviewers to free the IE code even before Netscape did with their own browser.
GNOME, Ximian, Xamarin, and Mono
De Icaza started the GNOMEGNOME
GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...
project with Federico Mena
Federico Mena
Federico Mena Quintero is a Mexican computer programmer.He wrote the GNOME Canvas while working at Red Hat. He also maintained GIMP for a time, and was one of the first hires at Ximian, now owned by Novell, where he still works...
in August 1997 to create a completely free desktop environment and component model for Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
and other Unix-like
Unix-like
A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....
operating systems. Earlier, de Icaza had created the Midnight Commander
Midnight Commander
GNU Midnight Commander is a free cross-platform orthodox file manager and a clone of Norton Commander originally created by Miguel de Icaza.Midnight Commander is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.-Design:...
file manager and worked on the Linux kernel
Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....
. He also created the GNOME spreadsheet program, Gnumeric
Gnumeric
Gnumeric is a spreadsheet program that is part of the GNOME Free Software Desktop Project. Gnumeric version 1.0 was released December 31, 2001. Gnumeric is distributed as free software under the GNU GPL license; it is intended to replace proprietary and other spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft...
.
In 1999, de Icaza, along with Nat Friedman
Nat Friedman
Nathaniel Dourif Friedman , known as Nat, is a programmer who co-founded Ximian along with Miguel de Icaza in 1999, a company that was later bought by Novell in 2003....
, co-founded Helix Code, a GNOME-oriented free software company that employed a large number of other GNOME hackers. In 2001, Helix Code, later renamed Ximian
Ximian
Ximian was a company that provided free software desktop applications for Linux and Unix based on the GNOME platform. Ximian was founded by Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman in October, 1999, and was bought by Novell on August 4, 2003...
, announced the Mono
Mono (software)
Mono, pronounced , is a free and open source project led by Xamarin to create an Ecma standard compliant .NET-compatible set of tools including, among others, a C# compiler and a Common Language Runtime....
Project, to be led by de Icaza, with the goal to implement Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's new .NET
.NET Framework
The .NET Framework is a software framework that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and supports several programming languages which allows language interoperability...
development platform on Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
and Unix-like
Unix-like
A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....
platforms. In August 2003, Ximian was acquired by Novell, Inc. There, de Icaza was Vice President
Vice president
A vice president is an officer in government or business who is below a president in rank. The name comes from the Latin vice meaning 'in place of'. In some countries, the vice president is called the deputy president...
of Developer Platform.
In May 2011, de Icaza started Xamarin
Xamarin
Xamarin is a company created in May 2011 by the engineers that created Mono, MonoTouch and Mono for Android which are cross-platform implementations of the Common Language Infrastructure and Common Language Specifications ....
to replace MonoTouch and Mono for Android after Novell, Inc. was bought by Attachmate
Attachmate
Attachmate Corporation is a software company owned by an investment group led by Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital, and Thoma Cressey Bravo. Attachmate focuses on terminal emulation, legacy modernization, managed file transfer, and enterprise fraud management software. Attachmate Corporation...
and the projects were abandoned. However, shortly afterwards Xamarin
Xamarin
Xamarin is a company created in May 2011 by the engineers that created Mono, MonoTouch and Mono for Android which are cross-platform implementations of the Common Language Infrastructure and Common Language Specifications ....
and Novell, Inc. reached an agreement where Xamarin took over the development and sales of these products.
Advocacy of Microsoft technologies
De Icaza endorsed Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document standard, disagreeing with a lot of the widespread criticism in the open sourceOpen source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
and free software community
Free software community
The free-software community is an informal term that refers to the users and developers of free software as well as supporters of the free-software movement. The movement is sometimes referred to as the open-source software community or a subset thereof...
.
He has also been a long time advocate of using Mono
Mono (software)
Mono, pronounced , is a free and open source project led by Xamarin to create an Ecma standard compliant .NET-compatible set of tools including, among others, a C# compiler and a Common Language Runtime....
- a free software implementation of Microsoft's .NET Framework
.NET Framework
The .NET Framework is a software framework that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and supports several programming languages which allows language interoperability...
- in GNOME. This has raised much disagreement due to the patents that Microsoft holds on, and related to, the .NET Framework.
Awards and recognition
Miguel de Icaza has received the Free Software FoundationFree Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
1999 Award for the Advancement of Free Software, the MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
Technology Review
Technology Review
Technology Review is a magazine published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1899 as "The Technology Review", and was re-launched without the "The" in its name on April 23, 1998 under then publisher R. Bruce Journey...
Innovator of the Year Award 1999, and was named one of Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine's 100 innovators for the new century in September 2000.
In early 2010 he received a Microsoft MVP
Microsoft Most Valuable Professional
The Microsoft Most Valuable Professional is the highest award given by Microsoft to those it considers "the best and brightest from technology communities around the world" who "actively share their ... technical expertise with the community and with Microsoft"...
Award.
In March 2010, he was named as the fifth in the "Most Powerful Voices in Open Source".
Personal life
De Icaza has had cameo appearanceCameo appearance
A cameo role or cameo appearance is a brief appearance of a known person in a work of the performing arts, such as plays, films, video games and television...
s in the 2001 motion pictures
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
Antitrust
Antitrust (film)
Antitrust is a 2001 thriller film written by Howard Franklin and directed by Peter Howitt....
and The Code.
He married Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
ian Maria Laura Soares da Silva (now Maria Laura de Icaza) in 2003.
De Icaza is critical of the actions of the state of Israel towards the Palestinians in the Middle East and has blogged about Israel being a "terrorist state", echoing the same statements made by Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
.
External links
Interviews
- http://media.libsyn.com/media/linuxoutlaws/linuxoutlaws75.oggMiguel de Icaza 2009 interview on Linux OutlawsLinux OutlawsLinux Outlaws is a Linux News and Technology Podcast produced by Six Gun productions. The show is presented by Fabian Scherschel and Dan Lynch. The show covers news and developments that the presenters encounter in their daily usage of Linux...
] - Catching up with Miguel de Icaza by .NET Rocks!
- http://radiotux.de/interviews/miguel_de_icaza_gnome.oggInterview with Miguel de Icaza by RadioTuxRadioTuxRadioTux is a German internet radio show. The topics are mostly around free and open source software, free operating systems like *BSD and Linux, as well as on sociopolitical issues...
] - Miguel de Icaza interview on FLOSS WeeklyFLOSS WeeklyFLOSS Weekly is a free software / open source themed podcast from the TWiT Network. The show premiered on April 7, 2006, and features prominent guests from the free software/open source community. It was originally hosted by Leo Laporte; his cohost for the first seventeen episodes was Chris DiBona...
- Talking Mono with Miguel de Icaza on Port25
- Linux Link Tech Show interview (audio), 2006 MP3
- March 2007 interview of de Icaza by Der StandardDer StandardDer Standard is an Austrian national daily newspaper which is published in Vienna . It was founded by Oscar Bronner as a financial newspaper and the first edition was published on 1988-10-19...