06-08-06

Media Release

Portland Open Source Leader Hires Two from OSU

CORVALLIS, Ore. – JanRain, Inc., a Portland-based developer of identity management software systems, has tapped two Oregon State University open source leaders to head the company, OSU officials announced today.

OSU Open Source Lab (OSL) officials Scott Kveton and Jason McKerr have been named CEO and vice president of operations, respectively, of the company. Over the past three years, Kveton and McKerr have taken OSL from novel concept to a world-leader position in the open source movement. OSL now hosts some of the world’s most popular open source applications, including the widely used Mozilla Firefox web browser, which has been downloaded more than 150 million times from OSL servers in Corvallis.

“I’m proud that Scott and Jason are seen as leaders in this field and as logical choices to guide the future development of JanRain,” said Curt Pederson, CIO and vice provost for OSU. “Their work at OSU created a lab that has strong and growing momentum within the computing industry – momentum that we will continue to build in the coming weeks and months. I’m grateful for their hard work and contributions to this effort and wish them the very best.”

OSU Network Services Director Shay Dakan, who has also played a key role in the development of OSL, will take over the lab’s day-to-day operations, working closely with Infrastructure Manager Corey Shields, who supports all downloadable open source applications at OSU (the OSL function for which OSU is most recognized). Deborah Bryant, director of the Government Open Source Conference founded last year by OSL, will also play a lead role in OSL development, along with Pederson.

“We have a strong, stable organization within the Open Source Lab, as well as a number of major projects in development,” said Pederson. “As we determine how best to fill these vacancies, we’ll remain focused on the work that has made OSL such a force in the open source community.”

“Open source” refers to software for which the programming code is accessible by anyone. Programmers are encouraged to develop such software further and share their innovations and enhancements with others. Such software, typically made available free of charge, has gained notoriety in recent years through the popularity of applications such as Firefox, Apache servers and the Linux operating system.