Ray Dassen

Contact information

J.H.M. Dassen, MSc.
Email: jdassen at debian dot org (GPG/PGP keys)
IRC: JHM on GIMPnet, IRCnet, OFTC, openprojects

I'm a developer of Debian GNU/Linux and do bits and pieces of other free software development.
I'm an occasional contributor to Wikipedia and I'm a GTF Contributor.

Job hunters, don't bother.

Born: April 19th, 1973 in Heerlen.
Did VWO (grammar school).
Started studying Computer Science in September 1991.
Worked as a student assistant January 1994 - May 1996 (for the "Computerorganisatie", "Programmeermethoden", "Computerarchitectuur" and "Compilerconstructie" courses)
I did a student project GIFGIS: producing soil pollution maps.
MSc in Computer Science, August 1996. My MSc project was on Molecular Computation (aka DNA computation) and Splicing Systems. (thesis info) As a part of this, I maintained a hyperbibliography on Molecular Computation and Splicing Systems, which was later maintained by Pierluigi Frisco and which is now available on his site.
September 1996 - October 1999. Research on the formalisation of the sofware process modelling language SOCCA in the SEIS (Software Engineering & Information Systems) group of LIACS.
I assisted in various courses: "Simulatie", "Object-geörienteerde Concepten", "Concepten van Programmeertalen" and "Software Engineering".
Left academia end of 1999 to be an IT professional
Details of my professional career are on my LinkedIn profile.

On 3 May 2005, I gave a presentation on The free software ecosystem [PDF] at the IBM Linux Knowledge Center at IBM Amsterdam.
On 27 October 1999, I gave a presentation about Software Development under Linux at Ortec.
J.H.M. Dassen, L.P.J. Groenewegen, G. Engels, P.J. 't Hoen, P.W.M. Koopman, I.G. Sprinkhuizen-Kuyper, Formalising Object-Oriented Modelling Languages, 27 September 1999, LIACS Technical report 99-09.
On 14 September 1999, I talked about The Free Software Movement for the Studievaardigheden course.
On 17 February 1999, I gave a talk on "Open Source Development" at Alpine, an IBM SIG on open systems and open standards.
J.H.M. Dassen, L.P.J. Groenewegen, I.G. Sprinkhuizen-Kuyper, P.W.M. Koopman, P.J. 't Hoen, G. Engels, A formalisation of SOCCA using Z (Part 1: the type level concepts), 5 February 1999, LIACS Technical report 99-03.
J.H.M. Dassen and I.G. Sprinkhuizen-Kuyper, Debugging C and C++ code in a Unix environment. Material for Studievaardigheden 2. HTML.
I gave a talk at the "Semi-Formal and Formal Specification Techniques for Software Systems" seminar at Dagstuhl on "The formalisation of SOCCA using Z" (Slides (.ps.gz), Abstract (.ps.gz))
A bibliography of Molecular Computation and Splicing Systems
Molecular Computation and Splicing Systems. MSc thesis, August 1996.
Co-author of Seminarium Geavanceerde Algoritmen (voorjaar 1994) ([dutch] background) (Dutch)
I was Co-author of the original Debian Linux FAQ

I think software patents are evil and try to educate people about them, e.g. by pointing them to the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, the League for Programming Freedom, and freepatents.

I'm a hacker, in particular of free software.

I educate people on the all too common misuse of the term hacker to mean cracker.

I think cryptography is useful as a means of protecting privacy and providing authentication when needed.