
Julian Assange contributed to PostgreSQL - replyifuagree
https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git&a=search&h=HEAD&st=author&s=julian
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dpeck
He also created strobe, an early port scanner, under the handle of proff.

Many people tend to forget what a small world the internet was at that time
and hackers (white/black/other hat) that tended to be productive in one area
were often productive in many others.

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azaras
Wikipedia tell us more about Julian Assange as a programer:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange)
(Programming section)

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zelly
He also contributed to an Emacs package

[http://ergoemacs.org/misc/Richard_Stallman_and_Julian_Assang...](http://ergoemacs.org/misc/Richard_Stallman_and_Julian_Assange.html)

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jakeogh
I like his search app:
[https://gitlab.com/surfraw/Surfraw](https://gitlab.com/surfraw/Surfraw)

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liveoneggs
He was also an early NetBSD developer -- proff@netbsd.org

[https://mwl.io/archives/443](https://mwl.io/archives/443)

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r32a_
He was a prolific programmer and hacker, that is how he got his start.

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andrenth
Also an OCaml hacker: [http://caml.inria.fr/pub/ml-archives/caml-
list/2000/08/6b8b1...](http://caml.inria.fr/pub/ml-archives/caml-
list/2000/08/6b8b195b3a25876e0789fe3db770db9f.en.html)

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jakeogh
Julian Assange – I’m slowly dying here…:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21924081](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21924081)

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bobbyd3
He contributed to surfraw as well. [http://surfraw.org/](http://surfraw.org/)

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motohagiography
Did he also run the original bugtraq list?

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GordonS
Do we know if this was "the" Julian Assange?

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gwd
For a while there I was getting emails about open-source related conferences
organized by a guy named "Hans Reiser". After the infamous Hans Reiser was in
jail. It was a bit creepy, and I felt a bit sorry for him (the non-infamous
Hans just trying to organize conferences, not the infamous one who murdered
his wife).

EDIT: Speaking of which, Wikipedia seems to think he may be eligible for
parole in a week or so. O_o

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catalogia
I sympathize with the whole _" why should I change, he's the one that sucks"_
attitude, but having the same name as a famous murderer is probably a good
opportunity to adopt a 'stage name' for professional use, if not get it
legally changed.

I understand 'Hans' is related to 'Johannes' and is sometimes anglicized to
'John' (I believe one of my great grandfathers did this.) One of the nice
things about the name 'John' is you can change it in various ways without
anybody thinking it unusual; e.g. a 'John' can also call themselves 'Jack' and
nobody thinks that unusual.

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stephenr
Maybe it’s because I’m not American but if you introduce yourself as Jack and
then your legal name is John I would think that unusual.

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maxlybbert
I thought it was a British thing. As an American, I’ve never met a John going
by Jack (at least, I don’t think I have).

On the other hand, C.S. Lewis apparently went by Jack, which isn’t a common
nickname for Clive or Staples. But people generally don’t argue over
nicknames. And they may not even realize a nickname actually is a nickname;
it’s not common for people to ask for your legal ID, after all.

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ncmncm
People still talk about Jack Kennedy, the assassinated US president.

Apparently Jack is a generic name, too, for any small boy. So inns would
employ a boot-Jack to help guests get their boots off, later supplanted by a
gadget.

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jpincheira
Wow. No tests though — joke. But super impressive. Didn’t know he was a C
programmer.

~~~
teh_klev
> Wow. No tests though

These are commits from the "dark ages" and doesn't mean he didn't test his
code locally. The "public" TDD culture didn't really surface until Kent Beck
et-al published their TDD manifestos in the early 2000's.

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acdha
Testing did not spring forth as a concept from Kent Beck’s head: it was widely
expected in, for example, Perl code on CPAN in the mid to late 90s and that
was far from unique. The tools were worse or mostly paid for some languages
(e.g. C) so there was more variation and justifications for not doing it.

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JensRantil
Those are some very inconsistent commit messages.

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thih9
What do you mean?

To me these messages seem consistent with other postgresql commit messages
from around July 1996.

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JensRantil
Mixed caps vs. no caps

Also my OCD kicks in with sometimes colons. Additionally, periods in commit
messages...

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finnthehuman
Has it really been long enough that this is no longer common knowledge? Before
it was "wikileaks founder was open source contributor", it was "open source
name has wiki thing for document leaks".

Of course that all happened in the long long ago so there is no reason to
dwell on it. It's not like every news story that has been trying to craft a
hack narrative to explain Assange's actions and motivations to the public has
fallen short of slashdot comments circa 2005.

There's no reason to know anything about the past. Back then we developed
everything in COBOL using Waterfall because no big brains were around to coin
the word "agile" yet and save us from ourselves. And subversion server side
hooks didn't even exist because nobody had coined the phrase "continuous
deployment" yet. Dark times indeed.

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fiatjaf
Sorry, but this comment is a bit nonsensical.

