Editing Eric Allman

{{Short description|American computer programmer (born 1955)}}
{{Infobox person
| image              = Eric Allman 2018.jpg
| name               = Eric Paul Allman
| birth_date         = {{birth date and age|1955|09|02}}
| birth_place        = [[El Cerrito, California]], U.S.
| occupation         = [[Programmer]]
| known_for          = [[Sendmail]]
| title              = Chief Science Officer
| education          = [[University of California, Berkeley]] ([[B. S.|BS]], [[M. S.|MS]])
| employer           = Sendmail
| spouse             = [[Marshall Kirk McKusick]]
}}

'''Eric Paul Allman''' (born September 2, 1955) is an American computer programmer who  developed [[sendmail]] and its precursor [[delivermail]] in the late 1970s and early 1980s at [[UC Berkeley]]. In 1998, Allman and Greg Olson co-founded the company [[Sendmail, Inc.]]<ref>{{cite web|title=Sendmail, Inc Company Information|url=http://sendmail.com/sm/company/|access-date=13 January 2013|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130115030959/http://sendmail.com/sm/company/|archive-date=15 January 2013}}</ref>

==Education and training==
Born in [[El Cerrito, California]], Allman knew from an early age that he wanted to work in computing. He used to break into his high school's [[mainframe computer|mainframe]] and later used the UC Berkeley computing center for his computing needs. In 1973, he entered UC Berkeley, just as the [[Unix]] operating system began to become popular in academic circles.<ref>{{cite news |first=Andrew |last=Leonard |title=You've got sendmail |url=http://archive.salon.com/21st/feature/1998/12/cov_11feature.html |work=Salon.com |access-date=2007-08-20 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070630074653/http://archive.salon.com/21st/feature/1998/12/cov_11feature.html |archive-date=2007-06-30 }}</ref>  He earned B.S. and M.S. degrees from UC Berkeley in 1977 and 1980 respectively.

==Sendmail and Syslog==
As the Unix source code was available at Berkeley, the local [[Hacker culture|hackers]] quickly made many extensions to the [[AT&T]] code. One such extension was ''[[delivermail]]'', which in 1981 turned into ''[[sendmail]]''.  As an [[Mail transfer agent|MTA]], it was designed to deliver [[email]] over the still relatively small (as compared to today's Internet) [[ARPANET]], which consisted of many smaller networks with vastly differing formats for e-mail headers.

Sendmail soon became an important part of  the [[Berkeley Software Distribution]] (BSD) and it used to be the most widely used [[Message transfer agent|MTA]] on Unix based systems, despite its somewhat complex configuration syntax and frequent abuse by Internet telemarketing firms. In 1998, Allman and Greg Olson founded ''Sendmail, Inc.'', headquartered in [[Emeryville, California]], to do [[Proprietary software|proprietary]] work on improving ''sendmail''.

The logging format used by the MTA, known as [[syslog]], was at first used solely by sendmail, but eventually became an unofficial standard format used by other unrelated programs for logging. Later, this format was made official by {{IETF RFC|3164}} in 2001; however, the original format has been made obsolete by the most recent revision, {{IETF RFC|5424}}.

==Other contributions==
Allman is credited with popularizing the [[Allman style|Allman indent style]], also known as BSD indent style.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/I/indent-style.html |title= Indent style |access-date=2007-08-20 |work=The Jargon File }}</ref> He ported a Fortran version of [[Star Trek (1971 video game)|Super Star Trek]] to the C programming language, which later became BSD Trek, and is still included in various Linux distributions as part of the classic bsdgames package.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/03/antique_code_show_star_trek/ |title=Star Trek: The original computer game|website=[[The Register]] }}</ref>

He was awarded the Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology in August, 2006 in [[Telluride, Colorado]]. In 2009 he was recognized as a Distinguished Engineer by the [[Association for Computing Machinery]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.acm.org/press-room/news-releases/distinguished-09/ |title= ACM Names 84 Distinguished Members for Advances in Computing Technology|publisher= Association for Computing Machinery|access-date=27 December 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100114003941/http://www.acm.org/press-room/news-releases/distinguished-09/|archive-date=14 January 2010}}</ref> In April 2014 he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame.<ref>{{cite web|title=Inductees {{ndash}} Eric Allman|work=[[Internet Hall of Fame]]|url=http://www.internethalloffame.org/inductees/eric-allman}}</ref>

==Personal life==
Allman, who is gay, lives in [[Berkeley, California]], with [[Marshall Kirk McKusick]], who had been his partner for more than 30 years before they got married in October 2013.<ref>{{cite web|last1=McKusick|first1=Kirk|title=Kirk McKusick's Family and Friends|url=http://www.mckusick.com/~mckusick/index.html|website=mckusick.com|publisher=Marshall Kirk McKusick|access-date=14 March 2015}}</ref>  The two first met in graduate school. McKusick is a lead developer of BSD.<ref>{{cite journal|title=What a connection - gay couple's contributions to information technology - Special Cyber Report|last=Friess|first=Steve|journal=The Advocate|date=3 March 1998|url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1589/is_n754/ai_20350568|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041216184527/http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1589/is_n754/ai_20350568|url-status=dead|archive-date=16 December 2004|access-date=2007-09-24|id= [https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=author%3AFriess+intitle%3AWhat+a+connection+-+gay+couple%27s+contributions+to+information+technology+-+Special+Cyber+Report&as_publication=The+Advocate&as_ylo=&as_yhi=&btnG=Search Scholar search] }}</ref>

{{quote|There is some sort of perverse pleasure in knowing that it's basically impossible to send a piece of hate mail through the Internet without its being touched by a gay program. That's kind of funny.<ref>''The Advocate'', 3 March 1998, p. 41.</ref>|Eric Allman}}

== References ==
{{reflist}}

== External links ==
* [http://www.neophilic.com/~eric/ Homepage as of 2010-10-29]
* [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/eric-allman/2/a9/705 Linkedin.com profile]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20061103151507/http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~eric/ Former homepage at Berkeley]
* {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www2.sendmail.org/~eric/ |date=* |title=Former homePage for Eric Allman (at Sendmail.org) }}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20070630074653/http://archive.salon.com/21st/feature/1998/12/cov_11feature.html You've got Sendmail], [[Salon.com|Salon]] article about sendmail going commercial (December 1998)
* [http://www.sendmail.com/company/management/?x=43 Biography at Sendmail.com (see "Chief Science Officer")]

{{Internet Hall of Fame}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Allman, Eric}}
[[Category:American computer programmers]]
[[Category:Free software programmers]]
[[Category:UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni]]
[[Category:People from Berkeley, California]]
[[Category:Unix people]]
[[Category:LGBTQ people from California]]
[[Category:1955 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]