Name David Wheeler Role Computer Programmer | ||
 | ||
Thesis Fully Countering Trusting Trust through Diverse Double-Compiling (2009) Doctoral advisor Daniel A. Menasce, Ravi Sandhu Books Ada 95: The Lovelace Tutorial | ||
Alma mater George Mason University | ||
David A. Wheeler (born 1965) is a computer scientist. He is best known for his work on open source software/free-libre software (FLOSS or OSS/FS) and computer security.
Open Source Software
In 2000, Wheeler self-published "Why Open Source Software / Free Software? Look at the Numbers!", a text where he argued that considering FLOSS is justified. According to Google Scholar, this article has been cited over 400 times in other scholarly works and in the 2004 report of the California Performance Review. Wheeler was interviewed about his webpage by Linux.com.
In 2001, Wheeler published a webpage where he measured the source lines of code of the Red Hat Linux distribution version 7.1. By applying conventional cost-estimating techniques, he concluded that it would cost more than a billion United States dollars to develop this distribution by conventional proprietary means. This work has inspired one person to measure other FLOSS systems, the Debian distribution.
In 2006, Wheeler posted "Nearly all FLOSS is Commercial" on his webpage. This is a critical issue in U.S. federal government acquisitions, because the U.S. government has laws and policies that prefer the acquisition of commercial items. He argues that FLOSS is defined as commercial software by the government's own rules, and believes that no one else had clearly articulated that before him.