Jon "maddog" Hall: Founding Member of UnifiedRoot Advisory Board.

I heard it through the grapevine that 'maddog' is now a founding member of the UnifiedRoot advisory board. That's cool! I only met him briefly at LinuxWorld last year, but he impressed me on a personal level. Mostly, I listened to he and Doc talk about stuff. Jon's involved in the background of a lot of things, and is probably best known for being the Executive Director of Linux International.

He was also someone who encouraged me to get my own Simputer when SSC, personified in Linux Journal through Don Marti, decided not to get me a Simputer. Actually, Don never answered my email.¹

You probably haven't heard of UnifiedRoot. A lot of people haven't. To understand UnifiedRoot better, you should read this, and if you still don't get it, think about your last name. Instead of .com, you could have .YourLastName. When you really think about it, all this .com, .net, .org doesn't really say much anymore.

The downside is that the first time I would do it, it would cost me $1,000 U.S... Ouch. Not priced much for the individual market, but good PR for the business. Think branding. Of course it's not the quirky branding that people do to get good search engine results. In fact, when you consider it, having names like 'Taran.Rampersad' sort of makes life easier for everyone to find a website of... 'Taran Rampersad'.

So while expensive, it is useful. And it might be important that it be expensive, to keep everyone from having one. You'd have to be serious to get one, unless you were rich. If you're going to put down $1000 for a name, you better have a plan to get it back.

Anyways - congrats to maddog.

¹ Just saying no would have been polite, but Don just didn't seem to think that necessary. Busy, busy Don. Right. By the way, I bought my own Simputer, thank you very much.

Picture at top was taken by me at LinuxWorld in Boston (2005). Image can be seen here... only shot I have of him. :-(