Mark Spencer (born April 8, 1977) is a computer engineer and is the original author of the GTK+-based instant messaging client Gaim (which has since been renamed to Pidgin), the L2TP daemon l2tpd and the Cheops Network User Interface.
Mark Spencer is also the creator of Asterisk, a Linux-based open-sourced PBX in software. He is the founder, chairman and CTO of Digium, an open-source telecommunications supplier most notable for its development and sponsorship of Asterisk. Spencer shifted from CEO to Chairman and CTO in early 2007.
While attending Auburn University, Spencer co-oped at Adtran when he wrote l2tpd. He went on to start a Linux technical support business. Spencer did not have enough money to buy a PBX (private branch exchange) for his company so he decided to write Asterisk and later founded Digium.
Famous quotes containing the words mark and/or spencer:
“There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“The Republican form of government is the highest form of government; but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature—a type nowhere at present existing.”
—Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)