VMware has appointed Dirk Hohndel as vice president and Chief Open Source Officer, to lead the company’s free and open source efforts and strategy.

“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 CTO, VMware. “Dirk brings a new level of leadership, best practices and creativity to help us drive these open source contributions and projects.”

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. Prior to his work at Intel, he served as Chief Technology Officer 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, said VMware in a statement, 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.

[Image courtesy: VMware]