Tarus Balog

Tarus Balog (born 1966) is an American open source advocate, software developer, commentator and blogger.

Tarus Balog
Balog in 2017
Born1966 (age 53–54)[1]
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania[2]
NationalityAmerican
Alma materHarvey Mudd College[3], various[4]
OccupationCEO[4]
Years active2001–present
Known forOpenNMS, open-source advocacy
Websitewww.adventuresinoss.com

He is the lead maintainer of the OpenNMS project.

Early life and background

Balog was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to parents of Hungarian extraction.[2][5] He spent his childhood in Asheboro, North Carolina.[6] In 1984 Balog graduated from high school at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham.[7]

OpenNMS

Oculan and Sortova Consulting Company

In September 2001, Balog joined Oculan, which was developing the open-source OpenNMS network management software framework under the leadership of the project's founder and the original chief technologist Steve Giles.[8][9][10] His role was to build a business around support and services for OpenNMS, as a complement to Oculan's previous channel-only approach to selling its line of OpenNMS-powered network management appliances.[8][9]

In 2002, Oculan discontinued work on the OpenNMS open-source project, turning its focus solely to its appliance business. Concerned that the project would die without a caretaker, Balog requested to become the new project maintainer. Giles agreed, on the condition that Balog leave Oculan the same week.[8]

Balog developed the software project further, gained customers and recruited a group of volunteer core developers while operating as Sortova Consulting Company.[8] Eventually he moved his employment and the OpenNMS assets to a local Internet service provider, where he continued to work on the project until 2004.

OpenNMS Group

In 2004, CEO Balog founded The OpenNMS Group along with the president David Hustace and the chief technology officer Matt Brozowski.[8] With the exception of a five-month period in 2013, Balog has been the company CEO since its founding.[11] The company has its headquarters in Apex, North Carolina, with satellite offices in Georgia in the US, Ontario in Canada and in Germany.[12]

Advocacy and writing

Industry and open-source conferences

Balog frequently speaks at conferences concerned with open-source software and network monitoring and management.

He has spoken at the Southern California Linux Expo in 2007, 2010 (as keynote speaker) and 2015.[3][13] In 2009 and 2014, he delivered talks at the Open Source Monitoring Conference in Nuremberg, Germany.[14] He has spoken at SouthEast LinuxFest in 2011, 2013 (delivered keynote) and 2015.[15] Balog spoke at Indiana LinuxFest in 2011 and at Ohio LinuxFest in 2011, 2012, and as keynote speaker in 2017.[16]

Published writing and blogs

As of January 2018, Balog has written 14 articles for Opensource.com[17]. In a 2009 blog post, he popularized the term fauxpen source as a satire of the open-core business model.

Criticism

Balog's characterization of the open-core business model has drawn criticism from some quarters. Some question the practicality of sustaining a profitable business built around an open-source project that fully conforms to all tenets of the Free Software Definition and Open Source Definition.[18]

gollark: I feel like if your bot can be generated without actually writing code yourself it isn't very good in the first place.
gollark: You can make a simple one using a shell script since those are run line by line and don't care about several megabytes of random binary on the end.
gollark: No, it probably would, self-extracting ZIPs exist.
gollark: So things will treat an image with a ZIP file on the end, mostly, as either an image with extra junk on the end, or a ZIP with extra junk at the start.
gollark: The header is at the end.

References
  1. Reed, Benjamin (January 10, 2016). "Tarus's 50th Birthday Party (January 10, 2016)". Flickr. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  2. Balog, Tarus (February 5, 2013). "Super Bowl". Adventures in Open Source. Archived from the original on January 3, 2018. Retrieved January 3, 2018.
  3. "Speakers". SCALE 13x. Linux Expo of Southern California Inc. Archived from the original on January 3, 2018. Retrieved January 3, 2018.
  4. "Tarus Balog". Opensource.com. Retrieved January 3, 2018.
  5. Balog, Tarus (March 22, 2013). "It's Friday, So This Must Be FInland". Adventures in Open Source. Archived from the original on January 4, 2018. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  6. Balog, Tarus (April 14, 2009). "Neo-Hippies?". Adventures in Open Source. Archived from the original on January 4, 2018. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  7. Balog, Tarus (June 11, 2014). "30 Years". Adventures in Open Source. Archived from the original on January 4, 2018. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  8. Balog, Tarus (September 1, 2007). "Happy Anniversary". Adventures in Open Source. Archived from the original on January 4, 2018. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  9. "New Company Aims to Transform Network Management Market". Oculan.com. Archived from the original on November 5, 2001. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  10. "OpenNMS - Free and Open Network Management Software". Archived from the original on May 11, 2000. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  11. Balog, Tarus (August 1, 2013). "I Lost My Job!". Adventures in Open Source. Archived from the original on January 4, 2018. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
    - Friend, David (January 6, 2014). "Ron Louks Hired By Blackberry To Head Device Group". huffingtonpost.ca. HuffPost News. Archived from the original on January 13, 2014. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  12. "Contact - The OpenNMS Group, Inc". OpenNMS.com. Archived from the original on January 4, 2018. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  13. "Southern California Linux Exposition - Speakers - Tarus Balog". socallinuxexpo.org. Linux Expo of Southern California. Archived from the original on August 1, 2016. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
    - "So, You Think You Want to Start an Open Source Business". socallinuxexpo.org. Linux Expo of Southern California. Archived from the original on November 9, 2016. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  14. "OSMC 2009 - Talks". NETWAYS GmbH. Archived from the original on January 4, 2018. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
    - "OSMC 2014 - Talks". NETWAYS GmbH. Archived from the original on January 4, 2018. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  15. "SELF2011-Schedule" (PDF). southeastlinuxfest.org. Archived (PDF) from the original on November 26, 2016. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
    - "SELF-2013-Schedule-Final" (PDF). southeastlinuxfest.org. Archived from the original on November 26, 2016. Retrieved January 4, 2018.CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link)
    - "2015 SouthEast LinuxFest Final Schedule" (PDF). southeastlinuxfest.org. Archived (PDF) from the original on June 20, 2017. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  16. "Speaker List 2011". Indiana LinuxFest. Archived from the original on February 25, 2011. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
    - Balog, Tarus (August 28, 2011). "Ohio LinuxFest 2011". Adventures in Open Source. Archived from the original on January 4, 2018. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
    - "Meet the Penguin Track". ohiolinux.org. Archived from the original on October 23, 2012. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
    - "Tarus Balog to Keynote Ohio LinuxFest 2017". ohiolinux.org. June 17, 2017. Archived from the original on September 12, 2017. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  17. "Tarus Balog authored content". Opensource.com. Retrieved January 5, 2018.
  18. Asay, Matt. "When open source isn't (open enough)". cnet.com. CNET. Archived from the original on January 9, 2018. Retrieved January 9, 2018.
    - Schestowitz, Roy. "How the "Zealot" Label Gets Used by Hypocrites". TechRights.org. Bytes Media. Archived from the original on January 10, 2018. Retrieved January 10, 2018.
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