Magnus Bäck has been playing with computers right since he was a kid, and is interested in everything from digital typography and compilers to relational databases and UNIX. His interests also include e-mail services, and he is an active contributor to the Postfix mailing list. Magnus holds a master's degree in computer science and engineering from Lund Institute of Technology, Sweden, and currently works with software configuration management and tools development for GSM/UMTS phones at Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications.
Patrick Ben Koetter is an active and well-known figure in the Postfix community and works as an information architect. Patrick Koetter runs his own company consulting and developing corporate communication for customers in Europe and Africa.
He speaks about Postfix at industry conferences and hacker conventions and contributes regularly to a number of open-source mailing lists. Patrick Koetter has also co-authored The Book of Postfix (ISBN: 1-59327-001-1).
Ralf Hildebrandt is an active and well-known figure in the Postfix community and works as a systems engineer for T-Systems, a German telecommunications company.
He speaks about Postfix at industry conferences and hacker conventions and contributes regularly to a number of open-source mailing lists. Ralf Hildebrandt has also co-authored The Book of Postfix (ISBN: 1-59327-001-1).
Alistair McDonald is a freelance IT consultant based in the UK. He has worked in the IT industry for over 15 years and specializes in C++, Perl development, and IT infrastructure management. He is a strong advocate of open source, and has strong cross-platform skills. He prefers vim over vi, emacs over Xemacs or vim, and bash over ksh or csh. He is very much a family man and spends as much time as possible with his family enjoying life.
David Rusenko was born in Paris in France, but spent most of his childhood overseas. He began working as a freelance web designer in 1996 and shortly after, in 1999, had his first experience with open source—a box copy of RedHat 5.2. After six years and as many versions of RedHat, he now creates appealing web pages and devises solutions implementing high availability through clustering and alternative security models.
He founded Aderes (www.aderes.net) in 2001, a company that provides e-mail and web-based security solutions. His search for an appropriate webmail platform for the company led him to SquirrelMail. Managing all aspects of the business initially—from the technical concerns to customer support—gave him the experience he now shares with the readers in the webmail chapter of this book.
David has studied both Information Sciences and Technology (IST) and Management Information Systems (MIS) at the Pennsylvania State University. He speaks both English and French fluently, and is conversational in Arabic. During his free time and vacations, he enjoys scuba diving, backpacking, playing racquetball, and playing electronic music records.
Carl Taylor has worked over 20 years in the IT industry and has spent the majority of that time working on UNIX-type systems, mainly communications or office automation projects. He was an early user of the UseNet network and taught himself to program in C by working on a variety of open-source software. His experience covers roles including pre- and post-sales support, product development, end-user training, and management.
Carl now runs his own Web Solutions development company Adepteo where they specialize in intranet and workflow products building on the best open-source applications available. While not working or looking after his children, Carl is something of a dance addict and is currently learning Latin and Ballroom and Salsa.