Project JXTA

Bill Yeager

Bill has worked for Sun Microsystems since June of 1994 and on Project JXTA from December, 2000 to September 2002. Although he is now formally a member of Sunlabs, he is still the JXTA Virtual Chief Technologist and is very active trying to initiate Internet, peer-to-peer standards in the IETF. His current reasearch in Sunlabs will certainly use jxta.

A part from these reponsibilities, Bill formulated Sun's WAP strategy, led Sun's WAP Forum team from June 1999 until June 2002, and is continuing this effort in the OMA looking at opportunities to work on Mobile/Wireless P2P standards there to assure their interoperability with the IETF. Since he has been at Sun, Bill has also worked with a team of architects to architect and evangilise wireless solutions for Java and what is MIDP 2.0; Invented, architected and help implement the Sun Internet Message Servers 3.1,2 and 5, as well as the initial version of what now is the iPlanet Wireless Server. Bill has filed 30 patent applications at Sun, is the principal inventor on 15, and has received three patents so far. He is also working with Rita Chen of Sun on a book titled "P2P Engineering." This book is scheduled to be published by Addison-Wesley late next year.

Before coming to Sun, Bill worked at Stanford University for 20 years, and there was particularly known for having invented the multiple protocol routers that Cisco Systems licensed in 1986, conceiving what became IMAP and writing the first UNIX IMAP servers, and writing a small serial line ftp program in 1979 that was later rewritten at Columbia University, and renamed Kermit.

Finally, prior to his nearly twenty years at Stanford, Bill worked at NASA AMES research center for 4 years for the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft programs. Here, he wrote the parts of the real-time operating system used by mission control to monitor the incoming telemetry of these spacecrafts, as well as the real time and offline imaging software.

Bill is an avid tennis player, loves wine and along with his wife Joan, has been collecting wine since the early 70's and has a real wine "cave," he is fluent in French, actually, he has traveled to France more than 20 times in the past 12 years, writes Chinese characters as a relaxing passtime, is learning Mandarin and enjoys teaching French to his grand daughter, Chloe. Chloe is 26 months old and is trilingual. And, most importantly, like the most of us, he loves having friendships with people from all over the world. Voilà! The key to world peace...

You can reach Bill at william.yeager@sun.com or on the Project JXTA Discuss mailing list.