Gregory Kurtzer

Gregory M. Kurtzer is a renowned technologist, open source advocate, and entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in Linux, high-performance computing (HPC), and large-scale infrastructure. He began his career at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he served as an HPC systems architect and played a pivotal role in designing and operating some of the world's most demanding scientific computing environments. His work has consistently bridged the gap between cutting-edge research and practical enterprise implementation, laying the foundation for scalable and secure computing platforms.

Throughout his career, Gregory has founded and led several influential open-source projects that have become cornerstones of modern infrastructure. He was the original creator of CentOS Linux, which grew into one of the most widely used enterprise Linux distributions in the world. He later went on to develop Warewulf, Perceus, and Singularity (now Apptainer), which have had a significant impact on cluster management and containerization in HPC. Most recently, he launched Rocky Linux in response to shifts in CentOS's direction, reaffirming his commitment to open, community-driven enterprise Linux. Gregory continues to champion innovation, transparency, and collaboration across the open source ecosystem.