Rich Salz is currently the technical lead for the XML appliance products at IBM

IBM

International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...

. He came to IBM when he was Chief Security Officer

Chief security officer

A chief security officer is a corporation's top executive who is responsible for security.The CSO generally serves as the business leader responsible for the development, implementation and management of the organization’s corporate security vision, strategy and programs...

 of DataPower

DataPower

DataPower is a product division within IBM that produces XML appliances for processing XML messages as well as any-to-any legacy message transformation...

, which was acquired by IBM in 2005.

He has made numerous contributions to recent work on XML

XML

Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

and SOAP

SOAP

SOAP, originally defined as Simple Object Access Protocol, is a protocol specification for exchanging structured information in the implementation of Web Services in computer networks...

 specifications, particularly involving security.

For many years, he spelled his name 'Rich $alz' and was an early contributor to the free software movement

Free software movement

The free software movement is a social and political movement with the goal of ensuring software users' four basic freedoms: the freedom to run their software, to study and change their software, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. The alternative terms "software libre", "open...

. In 1986 he replaced John P. Nelson as editor of the original "moderated" Usenet

Usenet

Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...

 group for free source code, mod.sources (later renamed to comp.sources.unix). This newsgroup

Newsgroup

A usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on...

 was a primary distribution medium for high quality free software before Internet access became available to the public. Salz posted early releases of patch

Patch (Unix)

patch is a Unix program that updates text files according to instructions contained in a separate file, called a patch file. The patch file is a text file that consists of a list of differences and is produced by running the related diff program with the original and updated file as arguments...

, localtime, perl

Perl

Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...

, cvs

Concurrent Versions System

The Concurrent Versions System , also known as the Concurrent Versioning System, is a client-server free software revision control system in the field of software development. Version control system software keeps track of all work and all changes in a set of files, and allows several developers ...

, elm

Elm (e-mail client)

Elm, is a text-based email client commonly found on Unix systems. It became popular as one of the first email clients to use a text user interface, and as a utility with freely-available source code. The name elm originated from the phrase ELectronic Mail.Dave Taylor developed elm while working...

, and the first free tar

Tar (file format)

In computing, tar is both a file format and the name of a program used to handle such files...

 program.
He passed the job of editor to Paul Vixie

Paul Vixie

Paul Vixie is an American Internet pioneer, the author of several RFCs and well-known Unix software.Vixie attended George Washington High School in San Francisco, California. He received a Ph.D in computer science from Keio University in 2011....

 in 1991. He also wrote free software, including porting AberMUD

AberMUD

AberMUD, pronounced , was the first popular open source MUD, named after the town in which it was written, Aberystwyth. The first version was written in B by Alan Cox, Richard Acott, Jim Finnis, and Leon Thrane based at University of Wales, Aberystwyth for an old Honeywell mainframe and opened in...

 to UNIX

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

 in 1989 and the original release of the well-respected and still-used INN, which became the de-facto software for running Usenet

Usenet

Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...

 news server

News server

A news server is a set of computer software used to handle Usenet articles. It may also refer to a computer itself which is primarily or solely used for handling Usenet. A reader server provides an interface to read and post articles, generally with the assistance of a news client. A transit...

s, for a few years.