The accidental global transmission of an rwall command in 1987 remains a defining moment in the early career of Jordan Hubbard, a Honolulu-born software engineer. While heading the Distributed Unix Group at the University of California, Berkeley, his attempt to contact local machines inadvertently alerted network users across the United States, resulting in hundreds of complaints from remote universities.
Founding the FreeBSD Project
Hubbard established his reputation as an open source developer by creating software such as the Ardent Window Manager. In 1993, he co-founded the FreeBSD project alongside Nate Williams and Rodney W. Grimes. His primary contributions to the project included the initial FreeBSD Ports collection, the development of a package management system, and the implementation of the sysinstall utility.
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In July 2001, Hubbard joined Apple Computer to manage the BSD technology group. During his tenure, he participated in the creation of MacPorts. By 2005, he served as the Director of UNIX Technology, and in October 2007, he moved into the position of Director of Engineering of Unix Technologies. He maintained this role at the firm until June 2013.
Industry Transitions
Following his departure from Apple, Hubbard became the CTO of iXsystems on July 15, 2013, where he oversaw the FreeNAS project. He left that position in March 2017 to join TwoPoreGuys, a biotechnology company. Between January 2019 and April 2020, he held a position on the engineering leadership team at Uber. As of April 2020, he serves as Senior Director for GPU Compute Software at Nvidia.
Fast facts
- Born: 1963, Honolulu, United States
- Education: University of California, Berkeley
- Co-founder: FreeBSD project, 1993
- Apple Inc. tenure: 2001–2013
- Previous employer: iXsystems, 2013–2017
- Previous employer: Uber, 2019–2020
- Current position: Senior Director, Nvidia
- Field: Open source software development
Questions readers ask
What was the rwall incident?
In 1987, Hubbard attempted to send a message to local machines at UC Berkeley, but the command mistakenly broadcast to the entire internet, triggering 743 complaints.
What are Hubbard's primary contributions to FreeBSD?
He co-founded the project and developed the initial Ports collection, the package management system, and sysinstall.
Achievements
- Held posts at Apple Inc.
- Fields: programmer
