Loïc Dachary | |
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Born | 1965 Suresnes, France |
Occupation | Free software volunteer and freelancer |
Website | www |
Loïc Dachary (born 1965) is a French free software developer and activist who has been active since 1987. Dachary currently contributes to free software projects and acts as president of the Free Software Foundation in France. He is a speaker for the GNU Project and the April association.
Dachary started as a C and Lisp developer in 1986. In 1987, he was hired to teach Unix and programming at Axis. In 1988, Lectra launched a 68k based hardware, and Dachary led a Unix System V port using the GNU Compiler Collection. When the project was completed, he took a sabbatical in 1989 to create the GNA, a non-profit group for the development and distribution of free software. Dachary went back to development for Tic Tac Toon and Agence France-Presse (AFP), where he learned C++.
In 1995, he founded the Ecila search engine, which was acquired by Tiscali and discontinued in 2001. After two years dedicated to the FSF France, Dachary worked for INRIA on RFID software in 2003. Starting with Mekensleep in 2004, Dachary wrote poker related free software, which was published as part of the PokerSource project. In 2007 he was hired by OutFlop, a startup specialized in poker software services based on PokerSource. In 2011 he became a Free Software freelancer and worked on XiVO.
In January 2012, Loïc became involved in OpenStack and now works as a Ceph developer.
When he was employed by Axis in 1987, Dachary offered copies of free software on magnetic tapes, such as Emacs or the GNU Compiler Collection. The Internet was difficult to access at the time and he became a distributor of software. After working on the Lectra project, Dachary created the GNA (Gna's Not Axis) non profit organization in 1989.
Although the original goal of GNA was to develop free software, it started as a news and mail provider. The connectivity to the a news and mail provider in Washington, D.C. was provided by Agence France-Presse (AFP) over a half-used satellite link. In 1990, GNA provided mail and news feeds to over 200 non profit organisations, individuals, and companies.