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Dan Kohn
American entrepreneur (1972–2020) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Dan Kohn (November 20, 1972 – November 1, 2020) was an American serial entrepreneur and nonprofit executive who led the Linux Foundation's Public Health initiative.[1] He was the executive director at Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), which sustains and integrates open source cloud software including Kubernetes and Fluentd, through 2020.[2][3] The first company he founded, NetMarket, conducted the first secure commercial transaction on the web in 1994.[4]
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Early life and education
Kohn was born in Philadelphia on November 20, 1972.[5] He studied at Phillips Exeter Academy,[6] and graduated with a bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College in 1994.[7]
Career
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NetMarket
Kohn co-founded and was CEO of NetMarket, an online marketplace. On August 11, 1994, NetMarket sold Ten Summoner's Tales, a CD by Sting, to Phil Brandenberger of Philadelphia using a credit card over the Internet. The New York Times described this as "...the first retail transaction on the Internet using a readily available version of powerful data encryption software designed to guarantee privacy." The encryption used in the transaction was provided by the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) program, incorporated into the X Mosaic browser.[8][9]
Other work
Kohn worked as chief technology officer at Spreemo, a healthcare marketplace, and at Shopbeam, a shoppable ads startup. Earlier, he worked as vice president at Teledesic, the satellite-based Internet provider funded by Craig McCaw and Bill Gates[10][11] and then became a general partner at Skymoon Ventures.[6]
Kohn co-authored RFC 3023, XML Media Types, which defined how XML and MIME interoperate and is the origin of the widely used +suffix in MIME types.[12] He also contributed two chapters to The Bogleheads' Guide to Retirement Planning.[13][14]
The Linux Foundation and CNCF
As executive director of CNCF, Kohn helped expand CNCF membership to include the largest public cloud and enterprise software companies.[15] He led the efforts to create a conformance standard for Kubernetes and a Kubernetes certified service provider program in 2017.[16][17] During Kohn's tenure at CNCF, he oversaw the growth of KubeCon (the foundation's primary event) from 500 attendees in 2015 to over 12,000 at the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2019 in San Diego, California.[18]
Kohn was chief operating officer of the Linux Foundation[19] and helped launch the Linux Foundation's Core Infrastructure Initiative, a project created after Heartbleed to fund and support free and open-source software projects that are critical to the functioning of the Internet. More recently, he helped create their open source best practices badge.[20][21]
As general manager of LF Public Health, Kohn helped "public health authorities use open source software to fight COVID-19 and other epidemics."[22]
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Personal life
Kohn was married to climate scientist Julie Pullen. Pullen and Kohn had two sons.[23]
Death
Kohn died of complications from colon cancer in New York City on November 1, 2020, at age 47.[24]
References
External links
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