Brian Fox (programmer) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Brian Jhan Fox
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Fox in 2008
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| Born | December 11, 1959 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
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| Employer | Opus Logica, Inc. |
| Known for | GNU Bash |
| Relatives | Donal Fox (brother) |
Brian Jhan Fox (born in 1959) is an American computer programmer. He is known for creating the GNU Bash computer program. Bash helps people talk to computers using text commands.
Brian Fox also helped create the first online banking system in the U.S. for Wells Fargo in 1995. Later, in 2008, he made an open source election system. Open source means the computer code is free for anyone to see and use.
Working with Free Software
In 1985, Brian Fox started working with Richard Stallman. Stallman had just created the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The FSF is a group that supports software that everyone can use, study, change, and share freely.
At the FSF, Brian Fox wrote several important computer programs. These include GNU Bash, GNU Makeinfo, and GNU Info. He also created libraries like `readline` and `history`, which help users type commands more easily.
For a while, he also helped maintain GNU Emacs. This is a very powerful text editor used by many programmers. Brian Fox made many contributions to these programs between 1986 and 1994.
Open Source Election Systems
In 2008, Brian Fox worked with Alan Dechert and Brent Turner. Together, they created a completely open source election system. This system was designed to be transparent and secure.
The team, including Parker Abercrombie, showed off their new system. They presented it at the LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco. This event took place from August 5 to 7, 2008.
Brian Fox is also a founder of two groups: the California Association of Voting Officials (CAVO) and the National Association of Voting Officials (NAVO). These groups are non-profit. They work to promote the use of open source voting systems in public elections. They believe this can make elections safer and more trustworthy.
In 2015, Brian Fox wrote an article for The New York Times. He wrote it with R. James Woolsey Jr., who used to lead the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In the article, they explained why open source election systems are important. They argued that these systems could help protect U.S. elections from outside interference.
Other Projects
Brian Fox also created a smaller version of Emacs called AMACS. This program was made for the Apple II computer.
