D. Richard Hipp is the creator and lead developer of SQLite, the small embedded SQL database engine that runs inside an enormous share of the world’s software. His company, Hwaci, employs the SQLite developers, and his own page notes that he holds a Ph.D. from Duke University and that SQLite won a 2005 Google-O’Reilly Open Source Award.
Hipp is unusual among software authors for the licensing choice he made: rather than pick an open-source license, he dedicated SQLite to the public domain. SQLite’s copyright page states that “all of the code and documentation in SQLite has been dedicated to the public domain by the authors,” and that contributors have signed affidavits placing their work in the public domain, with the original signed affidavits kept in a firesafe at Hwaci’s offices. Anyone may copy, modify, sell, or distribute the code for any purpose.
Beyond SQLite, Hipp created Fossil, a distributed version control system that also bundles a wiki, bug tracker, and forum, and earlier projects such as the CVSTrac bug tracker. His work emphasizes long-term reliability, full traceability of every line of code to its author, and tools built to last for decades.