Bdale Garbee, KB0G

After retiring at the end of August, 2012, from my long-held position as HP Open Source & Linux Chief Technologist... I worked part-time for Samsung as Senior Adviser to the Open Source Group that is part of Samsung Research America. In September of 2014, I was recruited back to HPE and served for 25 months as an HPE Fellow in Martin Fink's Office of the CTO at what became Hewlett Packard Enterprise, driving open source strategy and advocacy for the company. At the end of September 2016, I returned to early retirement... and am now enjoying "Retirement v2.0".

I currently serve on the boards of the Software Freedom Conservancy, Tripoli Colorado, and Amateur Radio Digital Communications, where I am also President.

I served for a while on the board of the Freedombox Foundation and made significant technical contributions early in the project history.

I served for a while on the board of the Linux Professional Institute helping it recover from some organizational trauma and transform to a membership-based entity.

I served for a decade as President of Software in the Public Interest, and as a member of the board of directors for some time before that.

I also served for several years on the board of the Linux Foundation representing the interests of developers and individuals.

I remain actively involved in the Debian project, where I served for a year as the elected Debian Project Leader, and for nearly a decade as Chairman of the Debian Technical Committee. I continue to maintain various packages for Debian.

My "spare nanoseconds" are mostly consumed playing with rockets, which includes managing Altus Metrum, LLC with business partner Keith Packard. I hold a "Level 3 certification" and am a member of both the National Association of Rocketry and the Tripoli Rocketry Association. My personal confirmed flight altitude record is 36,555 feet above ground, my highest recorded acceleration is 86 g, the heaviest project I ever built weighed 168 pounds on the launch rail, and I've flown a rocket I designed and built that reached Mach 3.21. I served on the committee that defined the Tripoli Mentoring Program, and am immensely proud that my son aced the test to become one of the earliest TMP participants.

I miss the early days of the web, when it was mostly informative text... but if you're really curious, there are some pictures of me on my bio page, and associated with the Wikipedia page about me. If you're a close friend or family member, email me for credentials to enter our gallery..

I'm most comfortable when there are lots of electrons flowing nearby, mostly in high-end computer equipment. There are only a few carbohydrates I've met in my life that I didn't like, I have very eclectic tastes in music, enjoy old movies, and I have this "German metal habit"... Porsche flavored. My current such toys include a 1984 Porsche 928S Euro, moss green metallic with beige interior, a dog-leg 5-speed, and a fairly loud custom exhaust system based on Magnaflow components. I also have a base-model 1987 Porsche 944 with the hard-to find "sunroof delete" option like the 928. And my current track-day car is a bit of a mongrel... it started life as a 1987 Porsche 944 Turbo, but now has a Chevy LS V8 engine, a manual steering rack, an un-boosted balance-beam brake master cylinder setup, a transaxle from a 1989 944 Turbo S, and many suspension upgrades. Looks like a Porsche, sounds like something completely different, and is a hoot to drive on track!

Over the years, I've spent a lot of my "spare time" on various facets of Amateur Radio. KB0G is my current callsign, previously I was N3EUA and before that I was KA3ORU. I'm a life member of AMSAT and of the ARRL, President of CODE, a former Vice-President of TAPR, a past Chairman and member of the Technical Committee of the Pikes Peak FM Association, past board member of the Pikes Peak Radio Amateur Association, and a member of the QCWA. Perhaps my best-known early contribution to the hobby was the silly little mail program I wrote for KA9Q's NOS networking software, called BM, though I suppose I'm more proud of my role as integrator and documentation author for the package prior to April 1989. I helped instigate N6GN's work on 10Ghz packet links, and continue to have a strong interest in data transmission over RF links. I was the project leader for the GPS receiver experiment on the AMSAT Phase-3D satellite, which launched in November 2000, after which it was known as AO-40. I was also one of the developers of the RUDAK digital communications processor. My primary focus on the RUDAK team was communication with the other experiment modules that RUDAK talks to over the CAN bus... SCOPE, MONITOR, CEDEX, and the thermistor SmartNode boards. More recently, I led the design and delivery of the IHU design for the AMSAT-NA Fox cubesat program, and one of my boards has been "in the stack" on every recent AMSAT-NA satellite.

If you want to find me "on the air" for a QSO, I'm operating FT8 on HF fairly often, sometimes go roving in VHF-Microwave contests, and often have an FM HT on the flight-line at rocket launches.

While I was "born and raised" in the era of 4.1BSD, shared a Vax 11/750 with Eric Crane at CMU, and ran some flavor of BSD on at least one machine up until the fire in 2013 (the Symmetric S/375, a uVax2, BSD/OS, and NetBSD on a pc532), I have become a strong supporter of Linux particularly the Debian GNU/Linux distribution, because of the emphasis on perpetual free availability of all of the source code to the system. I've contributed a few packages to the Debian effort, and now maintain a signficant number, including some that are essential packages in the base distribution, and some that are "big hairy monsters". At least it keeps me off the streets at night...

Not sure how to pronounce "Linux"? Why not let Linus himself tell you...

Cool Stuff on the Web

  • Cabell Garbee, Bdale's brother, restores neat old vehicles as a hobby.
  • Graves Mountain Lodge, owned and operated by "my extended family" in Virginia. We used to visit often... and still get back once in a while!
  • Visit the Radio Farm... a most unusual place!
  • Colorado Satellite Services Jim and I worked closely together on AO-40 RUDAK, and he's definitely "one of the good guys". The EyasSAT educational satellite system linked to from his page is neat stuff.

I was named for my maternal grandfather, who was a prominent individual in his time. While my father was the serious genealogist in our family, every once in a while I go do a web search on various family names. These are some references to Granddaddy that I have found:

I've been asked from time to time if I'm any relation to the Barksdale for whom Barksdale Air Force Base was named. My parents tell me they believe Eugene Hoy Barksdale was my third cousin twice removed. I had the chance to visit the base museum in the fall of 2016, and I must say I'm proud of his accomplishments!

Encrypting email is good. My currently preferred public key is

pub   rsa4096 2019-10-21 [SC]
      1E0B AAD8 5C22 32A1 B3CE  92EB B704 7105 830B 9FA1
uid           [ unknown] Bdale Garbee 
uid           [ unknown] Bdale Garbee 
sub   rsa4096 2019-10-21 [E]

You should be able to fetch that key from any of the major keyservers.