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Roy T. FieldingChief Scientist, Day SoftwareCo-founder and member, The Apache Software Foundation Ph.D., Information and Computer Science, UC Irvine
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Research ProjectsI finished my doctorate within the Software Research Group here at UCI. Much of my work was done under the auspices of the Hyperware project and collaborations with industry as part of the Institute for Software Research. My research interests include global software engineering environments, software design, software architecture for network-based applications, and application-level protocol design. Richard N. Taylor was my advisor and dissertation committee chair. I have been actively involved in the World Wide Web project since 1993. I set up the original UCI-ICS WWW server and created several WWW software packages, and in early 1994 became involved in the effort to specify and improve the WWW infrastructure through the IETF working groups on URI, HTTP, and HTML (the set of protocols that were used to retrieve and view this document). I also co-founded the Apache HTTP Server Project and on the board of directors of The Apache Software Foundation. We created the Apache HTTP server that currently dominates the general-purpose server market with over 60% of the public Internet websites using our software. Apache is my favorite example of the power of global collaboration for the creation of software. My dissertation, Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures, focused on the rationale behind the design of the modern Web architecture and how it differs from other architectural styles. |
Papers, Talks, and Specs
Open-Source Software
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My background is a bit odd: I was conceived in New Zealand and born in South Laguna, California. Although most of my schooling has been in the U.S., I was taught how to read during a school term in Auckland. My father is an emeritus professor in Social Sciences here at UC Irvine, which is why I have been raised a Yank. I was born in September 1965, during the first week of classes of the year UCI was established, so you might say that the two of us grew up together (except for the three years I spent studying Physics and International Politics at Reed College). I am part Maori, Kiwi, Yank, Irish, Scottish, British, and California beach bum. Like I said, a bit odd.
Most of the rest can be seen in my vita.
I was a Visiting Scholar at MIT/LCS during the summer of 1995, working with Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). You can also see my W3C Home.
I was named by MIT Technology Review as one of the TR100: The top 100 young innovators for 1999. "The 100 young visionaries who our editors and a distinguished Panel of Judges feel have the greatest potential for technological innovation in the 21st century." Gee, no pressure there.
The Association of Computing Machinery recently awarded the 1999 ACM Software System Award to The Apache Group for the Apache HTTP Server. I talked a bit about that honor in an interview with LinuxWorld.
On a more local note, I was named by the UCI Alumni Association as the Outstanding Graduate Student of 2000.
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
--- Crowfoot's last words (1890), Blackfoot warrior and orator.
To most readers it will be easy, after reading this tale, to accept Rover's theory that Man is set up deliberately as the antithesis of everything the Dogs stand for, a sort of mythical straw-man, a sociological fable.This is underlined by the recurring evidence of Man's aimlessness, his constant running hither and yon, his grasping at a way of life which constantly eludes him, possibly because he never knows exactly what he wants.
--- Clifford D. Simak, "City" [Notes on the Fifth Tale], 1952.
Life is a distributed object system. However, communication among humans is a distributed hypermedia system, where the mind's intellect, voice+gestures, eyes+ears, and imagination are all components.
--- Roy T. Fielding, 1998.