For the Ontarian

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

 dollar-beer, see James Ready (beer)

James "Jim" Ready is a businessman and technologist

Technology

Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...

. He is known within the Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 community for pioneering real-time

Real-time operating system

A real-time operating system is an operating system intended to serve real-time application requests.A key characteristic of a RTOS is the level of its consistency concerning the amount of time it takes to accept and complete an application's task; the variability is jitter...

 embedded

Embedded system

An embedded system is a computer system designed for specific control functions within a larger system. often with real-time computing constraints. It is embedded as part of a complete device often including hardware and mechanical parts. By contrast, a general-purpose computer, such as a personal...

 operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

s.

Ready received his BA

Bachelor of Arts

A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...

 in 1971 and his MA

Master of Arts (postgraduate)

A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...

 from the University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

 in 1976.

Ready was founder and President of Hunter & Ready beginning in 1980, which merged with CardTools in 1986 to become Ready Systems. Ready Systems merged with Microtec Research in 1993, went public in 1994, and was acquired by Mentor Graphics

Mentor Graphics

Mentor Graphics, Inc is a US-based multinational corporation dealing in electronic design automation for electrical engineering and electronics, as of 2004, ranked third in the EDA industry it helped create...

 in 1995. Ready served as chief technical officer

Chief technical officer

A chief technology officer is an executive-level position in a company or other entity whose occupant is focused on scientific and technological issues within an organization....

 at Microtec and Mentor until he left in 1999 to found MontaVista Software

MontaVista

MontaVista Software is a software developer that develops embedded Linux system software, development tools, and related software. Its products are targeted at other corporations developing embedded systems such as automotive electronics, communications equipment, mobile phones, and other...

. Jim served as founder and CEO of MontaVista until June 5, 2006 when the role of CEO was taken over by Thomas F. Kelly. Jim switched to the role of CTO

Chief technical officer

A chief technology officer is an executive-level position in a company or other entity whose occupant is focused on scientific and technological issues within an organization....

 of MontaVista. After the acquisition by Cavium Networks

Cavium Networks

Cavium is a San Jose, California-based company specializing in ARM-based and MIPS-based network, video and security processors. Cavium offers processor and board level products targeting routers, switches, appliances, storage and servers.-Major acquisitions::...

, Jim is still CTO of MontaVista, now a wholly owned subsidiary. As of end of February 2011, Jim is ad-interim president of the still separate subsidiary again.