The Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) announced today that Linux kernel maintainer Andrew Morton will work for the lab under an agreement between Digeo Inc. (Morton's employer) and OSDL. Morton will be focused exclusively on the 2.6 kernel during its maintenance cycle, the Lab said.

Under terms of the agreement between Digeo and OSDL, OSDL will support Morton's Linux kernel development work while he continues in his official role as principal engineer at Digeo. The sponsorship frees Morton to dedicate himself to his new role as the lead maintainer of the Linux production kernel while Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, maintains the development kernel, the Lab said. Digeo is a provider of media center products and interactive television services

OSDL recently announced that Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, has joined the lab as the first OSDL Fellow, taking a leave from Transmeta Corporation, where he is currently a Transmeta Fellow.

“It's great that both Andrew and I can work full-time on Linux through OSDL,” said Torvalds. “Now the maintainers of both the development kernel and the stable kernel have the support of a vendor-neutral organization committed to advancing Linux.”

“With deep roots in the Linux development community and the backing of the industry's leaders, OSDL is in the best position to support the work of exceptional engineers like Andrew,” said Stuart Cohen, CEO of OSDL. “This will allow OSDL to become a leading contributor to the Linux development community as well giving us a great technical resource for accelerating the use of Linux.”

“I'm pleased and honored to have the support of OSDL for the work we do on Linux,” Morton said. “I look forward to dedicating full time to working with all of the contributors, projects and companies that make Linux strong.”

As lead maintainer of the Linux production kernel, Morton works closely with Torvalds, the various kernel subsystem maintainers, Linux distributions, hardware vendors and other key parties to ensure that the production kernel meets their needs, the Lab said. Morton is responsible for ensuring that the production kernel is stable and offers good performance. He is the final arbiter over technical and business issues for the inclusion of patches into the production kernel.

Morton has 20 years of development and engineering management experience. Currently principal engineer at Digeo, Morton is a senior architect in the company's Linux efforts, a key software component of its soon to be released Moxi Media Center. Morton was previously a software engineer and product development manager at Nortel Networks. Prior to that, he was managing director of an Australia-based personal computing company. He holds an honors degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of New South Wales.

 
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