Mark Spencer at the 2006 O'Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference.

Mark Spencer (born April 8, 1977) is a computer engineer and is the original author of the GTK+-based instant messaging client Gaim, the L2TP daemon l2tpd and the Cheops Network User Interface. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1600x1068, 319 KB) Mark Spencer at the 2006 OReilly Emerging Telephony Conference. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1600x1068, 319 KB) Mark Spencer at the 2006 OReilly Emerging Telephony Conference. ... April 8 is the 98th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (99th in leap years). ... For the album by Ash, see 1977 (album). ... The GIMP Toolkit—abbreviated, and almost exclusively known, as GTK+—is one of the two most popular widget toolkits for the X Window System for creating graphical user interfaces. ... Buddylist of Gaim 1. ... In computer networking, the Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) is a tunneling protocol used to support virtual private networks (VPNs). ... In Unix and other computer multitasking operating systems, a daemon is a computer program that runs in the background, rather than under the direct control of a user; they are usually instantiated as processes. ...

Mark Spencer is also the creator of Asterisk, a Linux-based open-sourced PBX in software. He is the founder, chairman and CTO of Digium, an open-source telecommunications supplier most notable for its development and sponsorship of Asterisk. Mark shifted from CEO to Chairman and CTO in early 2007. Asterisk is a free software / open-source software implementation of a telephone private branch exchange (PBX). ... Linux (IPA pronunciation: ) is a Unix-like computer operating system family that uses the Linux kernel. ... A Private Branch eXchange (also called PBX, Private Business eXchange or PABX for Private Automatic Branch eXchange) is a telephone exchange that serves a particular business or office, as opposed to one a common carrier or telephone company operates for many businesses or for the general public. ... Chief Technical Officer or Chief Technology Officer, usually seen as CTO, is a business executive position whose holder is focused on technical issues in a company. ... This article is about Digium, Inc. ... A Chief Executive Officer (CEO), or Chief Executive, is the highest-ranking corporate officer, administrator, corporate administrator, executive, or executive officer, in charge of total management of a corporation, company, organization or agency. ...

While attending Auburn University, Mark co-oped at Adtran when he wrote l2tpd. He went on to start a Linux technical support business. Mark did not have enough money to buy a PBX (private branch exchange) for his company so he decided to write Asterisk and later founded Digium. Auburn University (AU or Auburn) is a state university located in Auburn, Alabama, in the United States. ...

Personal

He is born to an Egyptian Mother.

External links

• Forbes Magazine article on Mark Spencer
• The Asterisk PBX home page
• A somewhat dated homepage of Mark's
• Interview with Mark Spencer at OSDir.com
• Interview with Mark Spencer at CNet
• Linux Link Tech Show interview (audio), 2005
• News story regarding changing roles at Digium