Tom Lane (computer scientist)

Lane holds a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University, awarded in 1990. He occasionally lectures there, and at other places.{{cite web |url=https://www.pgcon.org/2011/schedule/speakers/202.en.html |title=Tom Lane's Bio on PGCon 2011 The PostgreSQL Conference Speaker Page |date=18 September 2015 }} He has worked for Hewlett-Packard,{{cite journal|date=May 1984 |url=http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1984-05.pdf | title=Multiprogramming in Model 520 BASIC | journal=Hewlett-Packard Journal | volume=35 | number=5 | pages=2021 }} Structured Software Systems,{{cite web |url=http://ptolemy.berkeley.edu/people/ |title=Ptolemy Project website }} Great Bridge, Red Hat, Salesforce, and Crunchy Data.

In July 2000, Lane was employed by Great Bridge, one of the first PostgreSQL support companies.{{cite web |date=31 July 2000 |last=Lane |first=Tom |title=Announcement: I'm joining Great Bridge |url=http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/19424.965086273@sss.pgh.pa.us}} However, the firm was dissolved in September 2001{{cite book|date=1 July 2004 |last=Bezroukov |first=Nikolai |author-link=Nikolai Bezroukov |chapter=The Sunset of Linux Hype |title=Portraits of Open Source Pioneers |quote=Norfolk, Va., September 6, 2001 – Great Bridge LLC, the company that pioneered commercial distribution and support of the PostgreSQL open source database, announced today that it has ceased business operations |chapter-url=http://www.softpanorama.org/People/Torvalds/sunset_of_linux_hype.shtml}} and he moved to Red Hat, a competitor of Great Bridge at the time, to develop their version of PostgreSQL named Red Hat Database.{{cite web |date=27 November 2001 |last=Lane |first=Tom |title=Announcement: I've joined Red Hat |url=http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/28590.1006892478@sss.pgh.pa.us}} The Red Hat Database project was later cancelled, but Lane continued to work there to develop PostgreSQL.{{cite news |last=Berkus |first=Josh |date=10 June 2013 |title=A report from pgCon 2013 |url=https://lwn.net/Articles/553256/ |publisher=LWN.net}} Between May 2013 and October 2015, he worked at Salesforce.com.{{cite magazine |title=Salesforce Nabs Open Source Database Guru For War On Oracle |magazine=Wired |url=https://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/05/salesforce-tom-lane/ |access-date=23 May 2013|last1=Finley |first1=Klint }} In 2015, Lane began working for Crunchy Data to allow more time to support the PostgreSQL community.{{cite press release |title=Crunchy Data Welcomes Open Source Pioneer Tom Lane |url=http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/crunchy-data-strengthens-open-source-development-capability---tom-lane-joins-the-crunchy-data-team-300168177.html |access-date=28 October 2015}}{{cite web |title=Tom Lane: changing employers|url=https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/2861.1446070467%40sss.pgh.pa.us}} Lane is part of the PostgreSQL core team.{{cite web |title=PostgreSQL: Contributor Profiles |url=http://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/ |access-date=3 May 2013}}

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 evaluating and fixing.

The Independent JPEG Group (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.

{{Cquote|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 web browsers.{{cite web |url=http://old.jpeg.org/jpeg/ |title=JPEG.org Homepage |date=2008-09-14 }} (www.jpeg.org)}}

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.

The original specification for the Portable Network Graphics (PNG), version 1.0, was written by Thomas Boutell and Lane, with contributions by many others.

Lane is a contributing editor for PNG Specification, version 1.1.

Lane is a member of the Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) advisory committee.

• [http://www.faqs.org/faqs/jpeg-faq/part1/preamble.html Thomas G. Lane, JPEG FAQ]
• [http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2002/view/e_sess/2681 Thomas G. Lane, PostgreSQL Concurrency Issues ]
• [http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=100196 Thomas G. Lane, User interface software structures]
• [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.50.6570 Thomas G. Lane, Studying Software Architecture Through Design Spaces and Rules]

• 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."{{cite web |last=Law |first=Gillian |date=2002-07-02 |url=http://www.networkworld.com/news/2002/0719jpeg.html |title=Forgent claims JPEG patent; others cry foul |website=NetworkWorld |access-date=2007-09-11 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120402164053/http://www.networkworld.com/news/2002/0719jpeg.html |archive-date=2012-04-02}}
• In describing the attention to detail of another software company: "The Single Unix Spec says that getopt() is supposed to be defined by , but I guess reading the spec closely is not a hobby in Redmond..."{{cite web |url=http://www.mail-archive.com/pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org/msg52400.html |title=pgsql-hackers forum |last=Lane |first=Tom |date=2004-11-19 |access-date=2007-09-11}}
• In contributing to: "The Only Coke Machine on the Internet"{{cite web |url=https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~coke/history_long.txt |title=The Only Coke Machine on the Internet }} "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".{{cite web |last=Lane |first=Tom |date=16 Feb 2007 |url=https://www.mail-archive.com/pgsql-general@postgresql.org/msg93043.html |title=Re: Database performance comparison paper }}

• Mentioned in the Doom 3 video game readme file{{cite web |last=Stephane |first=Peter |date= |url=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/id-Software/DOOM-3/master/README.txt |title=Doom 3 Readme File |access-date=2020-07-30}}
• Partly responsible for JPEG being standardized as the dominant computer image format on the World Wide Web{{cite web |url=http://old.jpeg.org/jpeg/ |title=JPEG.org |date=2008-09-14 }}

{{Reflist|2}}

;JPEG

• {{Official website|www.ijg.org}}, Independent JPEG Group
• [http://www.faqs.org/faqs/jpeg-faq/ Jpeg Faqs]
• [http://jpegclub.org/ Additional features for libjpeg]

;PostgreSQL

• [http://www.thefreelibrary.com/-a066310915 Great Bridge Developers to Keynote Open Source Database Summit; Project Management, Transaction Processing On the Agenda] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714145339/http://www.thefreelibrary.com/-a066310915 |date=2014-07-14 }} Business Wire (October 24, 2000)
• [http://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/ PostgreSQL Core Team]

;Other

• [https://m.slashdot.org/story/49466 Slashdot.org: Unsung Heroes of Open Source Software?]
• [http://www.nedhat.com/upside_article.html He speaks hacker]
• [http://www.ddj.com/architect/184404562 Dr. Dobb's Data Compression Newsletter, Issue 17, April 2001]
• [http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2002/view/e_spkr/1218 O'Reilly Open Source Convention 2002]
• [http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~bird/papers/msrchallenge2006.pdf Mining Email Social Networks in Postgres]

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Category:1955 births

Category:Living people

Category:People from Madrid

Category:Carnegie Mellon University alumni

Category:Hewlett-Packard people

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Category:American computer programmers

Category:Free software programmers