Rob Landley

My main projects right now are&nbsp;<a href="http://landley.net/toybox/about.html" rel="nofollow">Toybox</a> and <a href="https://github.com/landley/mkroot" rel="nofollow">mkroot</a> (the successor to <a href="http://landley.net/aboriginal/about.html" rel="nofollow">Aboriginal Linux</a>), although I do some work on&nbsp;<a href="http://landey.net/qcc" rel="nofollow">toolchains</a>, kernel,&nbsp;<a href="http://landley.net/qemu/2008.html" rel="nofollow">qemu</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="http://kernel.org/doc" rel="nofollow">documentation</a> too. 
 
My modus operandi is to dig down through superfluous layers of complexity to create simple, flexible systems you can reproduce from scratch, port wherever you like, and built from a small enough amount of code you can understand what it's doing and audit it for security problems. Treat complexity is a cost, and try to get the best bang for the buck. 
 
It's basically glorified janitorial work. Most people race towards the new frontier, I follow behind cleaning up the mess. My goal is to figure out how to reproduce the experts' black magic, then make it look so easy that being an expert in it no longer means anything. 
 
These days, turning Android into a self-hosting development environment seems like the best path forward, for reasons explained in the above video. (There are literally a billion smartphones preinstalled with Android. Having a phone ought to be enough to let you program the phone, down to the deepest level.) Releasing new code under a license that places it into the public domain allows the most flexible and widespread use.

Free

Do the thing. (General expression of support.)

Do the thing! (Louder expression of support.)

Do toybox. (Encourage me to spend more time on toybox, which has its own&nbsp;roadmap.)

Do system bootstrapping. (Encourage me to spend more time on Aboriginal Linux, which includes getting the Android Open Source Project to build under the minimal development environment it provides.)

Do toolchains. (Come up with cross and native compiler/linker/assemblers that can build a runnable system and are freely binary distributable without obvious risk of license lawsuit. This includes writing a new "make", "lex", "yacc", and so on.)

Do all the things! (Enthusiastic expression of support.)

Do toybox! (Louder encouragement to spend time on toybox.)

Do system bootstrapping! (Louder encouragement to spend time on Aboriginal Linux and cleaning up AOSP.)

Do toolchains! (Lounder encouragement to spend time getting a new toolchain working.)

Corporate sponsorship. Send me your todo list, I'll review it (via email, phone, or google hangouts), then take your priorities into account when choosing what order to work on things in one or more of the above projects, and send you monthly reports on progress towards your goals. This won't change the nature of the projects, but can encourage me to include features I wouldn't otherwise bother with.

Recent posts by Rob Landley