Tim Howes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tim Howes is the co-inventor of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), the Internet standard for accessing directory servers. The main purpose was to handle situations that the X.500 protocol suite could not address.
X.500 directories list network resources to make finding them and using them easier for network administrators and users. Unfortunately, accessing X.500 records has required a full-blown X.500 server; there was no such thing as an X.500 client. This led Howes to co-create DIXIE, a directory client for X.500 directories. This work formed the basis of his Ph.D. dissertation and was the foundation for LDAP, a standards-based version of DIXIE for both clients and servers. The first publicly available version of LDAP was published in 1993.
In 1996, Tim was named one of the Top 25 Network Technology Drivers by Network Computing magazine. In 1997, LDAP version 3 won PC Magazine's Technical Excellence: Networking award. In June, Tim received Netscape's highest engineering honor - he was named a Netscape Fellow, a position reserved for only a few of the company's most highly skilled technologists.
Currently, he is the Chief Technology Officer at Opsware Inc. (formerly Loudcloud).
