About me
Dirk is the Head of Ericsson Software Technology, leading a team of engineers working on upstream open source contributions. He brings nearly four decades of software and open source leadership, most recently as head of Verizon's Open Source Office, focused on open source governance and security. Before that, he spent six years as VMware's Chief Open Source Officer, establishing the company’s OSPO and driving its involvement in the open source community, and nearly fifteen years at Intel as Chief Linux and Open Source Technologist, shaping the company's open source strategy. He began his executive career as the first CTO of SUSE Linux.
Dirk has been a software developer and part of many free software and open source communities since the late 1980s, helping build and grow projects like Linux, KDE, Yocto, and most recently Subsurface and . He has served on the boards and advisory boards of a number of open source foundations, including the Linux Foundation, KDE, GNOME, and the Free Standards Group. He holds a degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Würzburg and lives in Portland, Oregon.
