Global provider of cloud infrastructure, VMware, has announced the appointment of Dirk Hohndel as Vice President and Chief Open Source Officer. Before joining VMware, Mr. Hohndel spent nearly 15 years as Intel’s Chief Linux and Open Source Technologist, guiding Intel’s engagements in open source.
Dirk Hohndel will lead VMware‘s free and open source efforts and strategy, driving common values and processes across the company for VMware’s interaction with the open source communities, with a goal to more efficiently and effectively increase the company’s engagement in and contributions to open source communities as well as use open source components to accelerate software development.
“As VMware broadens its ecosystem from traditional engagements in the data center space to areas such as software-defined networking and Cloud Native and mobile app technologies, we have been releasing more and more of our new offerings as open source software,” said Ray O’Farrell, executive vice president and Chief Technology Officer, VMware. “Dirk brings a new level of leadership, best practices and creativity to help us drive these open source contributions and projects.”
Prior to his work at Intel, Dirk Hohndel served as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of SuSE and Unix Architect of Deutsche Bank. Mr. Hohndel has been an active developer and contributor in Linux and open source since the early 1990s and was one of the early Linux kernel developers contributing to several dozen open source projects over the years. He holds a Diploma in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Würzburg, Germany.
