Brian Paul is a computer programmer

Computer programming

Computer programming is the process of designing, writing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. This source code is written in one or more programming languages. The purpose of programming is to create a program that performs specific operations or exhibits a...

 who wrote and continues to maintain the source code for the open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 Mesa graphics library. Paul began programming initial source code in August 1993. Mesa is a free software

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

/open source graphics

Computer graphics

Computer graphics are graphics created using computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of image data by a computer with help from specialized software and hardware....

 library

Library (computer science)

In computer science, a library is a collection of resources used to develop software. These may include pre-written code and subroutines, classes, values or type specifications....

 that provides a generic OpenGL

OpenGL

OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...

 implementation for rendering three-dimensional graphics on multiple platforms

Platform (computing)

A computing platform includes some sort of hardware architecture and a software framework , where the combination allows software, particularly application software, to run...

. Though Mesa is not an officially licensed OpenGL implementation, the structure, syntax and semantics of the API is that of OpenGL.

Education

Brian obtained his bachelor's degree at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh in 1990. He worked on the SSEC Visualization Project while obtaining his master's degree at the University of Wisconsin–Madison

University of Wisconsin–Madison

The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...

.

Mesa development

Paul was a graphics hobbyist. He thought it would be fun to implement a simple 3D graphics library using the OpenGL API, which he might then use instead of VOGL. He spent eighteen months of part-time development before he released the software on the Internet. The software was well received, and people began contributing to its development. Graphics hardware support was added to Mesa in 1997 in the form of a Glide driver for the new 3dfx Voodoo graphics card.

Career

Paul continued working on the SSEC Project after graduation. He has also worked for Silicon Graphics, Avid Technology, and Precision Insight (bought out by VA Linux Systems

SourceForge, Inc.

Geeknet, Inc. is a Mountain View, California company that owns several computer tech-related websites and the online retailer ThinkGeek. Formerly known as VA Research, VA Linux Systems, VA Software, and SourceForge, Inc., it was founded in 1993.-VA Research:VA Research was founded in November...

).

In 2000, Brian won the third Free Software Foundation

Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...

 Award for the Advancement of Free Software.

In November 2001, he co-founded Tungsten Graphics.

In December 2008, Tungsten Graphics was acquired by VMware

VMware

VMware, Inc. is a company providing virtualization software founded in 1998 and based in Palo Alto, California, USA. The company was acquired by EMC Corporation in 2004, and operates as a separate software subsidiary ....

, where he now works.

Other contributions

Brian has also contributed to or written:

• Chromium
• Direct Rendering Infrastructure in XFree86
• Blockbuster - a high-res movie player for scientific visualization applications
• Glean - OpenGL validation
• Togl - an OpenGL widget for Tcl/Tk
• Vis5D
  Vis5D
  Vis5D is a 3-D visualization system used primarily for animated 3-D visualization of weather simulations. It was the first system to produce fully interactive animated 3-D displays of time-dynamic volumetric data sets and the first open source 3-D visualization system.-Design:Vis5D was created in...
  
   visualization system
• Cave5D
  Cave5D
  Cave5D is an adaptation of Vis5D to the CAVE for immersive virtual reality.-Bibliography:* W. Hibbard, J. Anderson, I. Foster, B. Paul, R. Jacob, C. Schafer, and M. Tyree, Exploring Coupled Atmosphere-Ocean Models Using Vis5D, Int. J. of Supercomputer Applications 10, no. 2, 1996,...
  
   - an adaptation of Vis5D to immersive virtual reality
• VisAD
  VisAD
  VisAD is a Java component library for interactive and collaborative visualization and analysis of numerical data. It combines a flexible data model and distributed objects to support sharing of data, visualizations and user interfaces between different data sources, different computers and...
  
  visualization system
• TR - OpenGL tile rendering library
• V-Blocks - virtual building blocks
• Avid Marquee - video animation, 3D text, graphics

External links

• Brian Paul's Home Page
• "Interview: Brian Paul Answers"; slashdot; December 17, 1999; Retrieved February 11, 2007