Talk:Alan Cox (computer programmer)

Old Discussion

So that Alan you wrote a computer Game called Seas of Blood in 1986 based on the fighting fantasy book of the same name? Htaccess 07:14, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I worked on Robin of Sherwood, Seas of Blood, Blizzard Pass, Personal Nightmare and bits of Elvira, also Demons of the Deep (never released). The only one of them I did the full game design for is Blizzard Pass. Seas of Blood was done by a team of people led by Mike Woodroffe. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by AlanCox (talk • contribs) 02:12, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Programming freedom

Article references "programming freedom." What does this refer to, specifically? Free (GNU-style) software? Can we turn this phrase into a link to a Wikipedia article? Jdavidb 19:24, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Yes, that would be correct. Possibly a link to the League for Programming Freedom, but that's not quite right. Ted 19:57, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Closer would be the fsf.org discussion on 'free software' but it really spans both AlanCox

Programming experience

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_Soft

"Blizzard Pass" (a single player game closely related to AberMUD) by Alan Cox and "Kayleth" (by Stefan Ufnowski and Ann Ufnowski) followed as the company diversified the game range. Adventure Soft also began producing games for Tynesoft including the game of Supergran and "Terraquake" (featuring He-Man).

Alan Cox doing MUD games? Wow!

Yeah, a pity there's no mention in the article. That game Blizzard Pass was bundled with the ZX Spectrum +2 computer, so a lot of people played it. It's not a "MUD", of course, being single-player, but it's a large and elaborate text adventure, with some optional graphics. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:DDC4:585E:A975:7E2E (talk) 02:55, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

born?

born??

Yes Alan Cox (talk) 16:03, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

"Dense" comments?

Is that an attempt to literally translate a word from another language? According to a dictionary, this meaning is:

slow to learn or understand; lacking intellectual acuity

Let's change it to something that more accurately represents the meaning?

Actually it can also mean

1.1 Having relatively high density.

1.2 Crowded closely together; compact: a dense population.

2 Difficult to understand because of complexity or obscurity: a dense novel.

And more I think the point that the writer was trying to make was that the comments were highly imformative (lots of facts "crowded closely together"). It's actually standard English, no foreign languages needed at all: generally the idea conveyed is of a lot of complex facts and other information compacted together into one small work. It doesn't look like it needs much changing to me - Bryan

another Alan Cox

Actor, starred as young Watson in Young Sherlock Holmes, 1985. Actually there may be four actors by this name, according to imdb.

There is also another Alan Cox who works on FreeBSD which causes confusion —The preceding unsigned comment was added by AlanCox (talk • contribs) 22:26, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

While vs. whilst

I'd much prefer "while", as I have never seen "whilst" before. Whilst this is not the "simple English" encyclopedia, we shouldn't needlessly scare away readers.

PS: I tried googling for whilst, and it seems the (major) hits are mostly people explaining the word, whilst the hits for while are people using the word.--Per Abrahamsen 19:38, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Whilst is in very common usage in the U.S.

You mean "while"... Peter O. (Talk) 19:18, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Present Linux Kernel Involvement

Can someone add information regarding his current Linux Kernel involvement (Sept 2006)? I remember reading (and it is mentioned in the article) that Alan was taking time off to work on his MBA, but it looks like he is involved in the Linux mailing list again (I have seen some e-mails from him on KernelTrap.org). What is his present involvement?

He completed his MBA. He's still at Red Hat and he's still doing kernel stuff. Unfortunately, I am not a WP:RS and offhand I cannot find something repeating this which I could quote. Sorry! Telsa (talk) 16:22, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

http://www.h-online.com/open/Dispute-between-Linux-gurus-Alan-Cox-and-Linus-Torvalds--/news/113882 Present involvement seems to be over now by the looks of it. 64.25.148.203 (talk) 02:25, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Early involvement in Linux at Swansea University

The opening paragraph is actually also mentioned in a printed book (Rebel Code). You can read a quote from the book (and read a reference to it) on http://twenty.sucs.org/TheSociety/About#wikitext under "A Brief History".

144.32.126.11 (talk) 11:43, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

It would be good to have dates (and/or Linux version numbers) in the mention of the networking bug fixes. Could someone please add them? LachlanA (talk) 05:24, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Both picstures on the page have him wearing a red hat. Is that a habit of his? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 15.251.169.69 (talk) 23:36, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

As the article states, he used to work on Red Hat Linux. ~2026-20003-78 (talk) 06:04, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

translation into Chinese Wikipedia

The version 18:26, 30 December 2020‎ Monkbot of this article is translated into Chinese Wikipedia to expand an existing article there.--Wing (talk) 10:05, 8 February 2021 (UTC)