Richard Laager
Developer at Wikstrom Telephone Company
Thief River Falls, Minnesota, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolRichard Laager is a seasoned developer with 26 years of experience contributing to critical open-source infrastructure and Debian packaging while holding long-term operational roles in telecom IT management. He has made substantive backend contributions to OpenZFS—improving core functionality, error handling, and documentation—and maintains Debian packages, blending low-level systems work with meticulous technical writing. Based in Thief River Falls, MN, he also runs leadership roles in community networking and instant messaging initiatives, demonstrating a mix of hands-on engineering and organizational stewardship. His background includes a B.S. in Information Technology Management and additional study in computer science at Oxford, reflecting both practical and academic grounding. Notably, he pairs production-grade filesystem and network protocol improvements with clear, user-focused documentation, making complex systems more reliable and accessible.
26 years of coding experience
6 years of employment as a software developer
B.S., Information Technology Management, B.S., Information Technology Management at University of Minnesota CrookstonComputer Science, Computer Science at Oxford University
Github Skills (18)
filesystem10
openzfs10
debian10
c1110
ubuntu10
c1710
system10
sys10
systemd10
error-handling10
documentation10
freebsd9
linux9
rs8
testing8
Programming languages (12)
Github contributions (5)
openzfs/openzfs-docs
May 2020 - Jan 2023
OpenZFS Documentation
Role in this project:
Technical Writer
Technical WriterContributions:46 reviews, 153 commits, 79 PRs in 2 years 7 months
Contributions summary:Richard Laager primarily contributed to the OpenZFS documentation repository, focusing on updating and clarifying installation guides for various Debian and Ubuntu releases. Their work involved renaming existing sections to improve readability, adding instructions for new Ubuntu versions (20.04 and 22.04), and correcting formatting inconsistencies throughout the documentation. Laager also expanded and refined instructions related to SSH configuration and the local build process, enhancing the usability of the documentation.
openzfs
openzfs/zfs
Apr 2011 - Apr 2022
OpenZFS on Linux and FreeBSD
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:61 reviews, 99 commits, 42 PRs in 11 years 2 months
Contributions summary:Richard contributed to the core functionality of the ZFS file system. Their work included implementing support for IEC base-2 prefixes, improving error message consistency, and correcting error messages and misspellings related to ZFS commands and internal processes. They also addressed issues related to the handling of specific devices and configurations within the ZFS environment. Furthermore, they made changes in documentation and tests.
freebsdlinuxopenzfssystem-softwarefile-system
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