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basil/README.md

Basil Crow

I am a software engineer interested in systems programming, debugging, migrations, builds, and documentation.

Previously, I was a Principal Engineer at CloudBees, where I contributed to the Jenkins project as a core maintainer and governance board member. Before that, I worked at Delphix, embedding filesystems in database storage appliances.

I received my Sc.B. and Sc.M. in Computer Science from Brown University.

About Me

As a Principal Software Engineer and systems generalist with 15 years of experience, I have roots in operating systems, networking, and storage (ZFS), along with deep Java/JVM expertise in concurrency, class loading, garbage collection, and performance tuning.

I work across the full software development lifecycle (SDLC): architecture, rapid prototyping, project management, development, testing, debugging, documentation, deployment, and operations. My focus is on building teams, mentoring contributors, defining problems, and end-to-end ownership of solutions.

I have a proven track record of delivering high-risk migrations on time, within budget, and to a high standard of quality. I proactively keep third-party dependencies current and secure.

I am passionate about debugging and follow hard problems wherever they lead me. I learn whatever languages or tools the job demands, and I do so with both breadth and depth. I leave every subsystem better than I found it, typically with a cleaner build system, stronger debugging support, and clearer documentation.

Open Source Leadership

I excel at attracting and retaining contributors and at providing technical leadership to large, distributed, cross-cultural teams, with extensive experience working across Europe. These are the projects I maintain and lead:

  • Jenkins: I have been part of the Jenkins community since 2012, and my involvement has grown from user to contributor (2014), plugin maintainer (2018), core maintainer (2021), and GitHub organization administrator (2023). Elected to the Jenkins Governance Board in 2023 and reelected for a second term in 2025, I now also represent the project on the Continuous Delivery Foundation Technical Oversight Committee, an elected role within the Linux Foundation.
  • ptools: A collection of Linux process inspection utilities modeled after the Solaris originals, written in Rust and available on crates.io and in Fedora Linux. It includes pstack(1), pfiles(1), ptree(1), penv(1), and more behind a consistent interface for inspecting both live processes and core dumps. Postmortem debugging is a first-class feature, and it handles Ubuntu/Debian Apport .crash files and systemd-coredump core dumps on RHEL/Fedora/SUSE as naturally as a live process, and I have upstreamed changes to Ubuntu Apport that enable postmortem analysis of open file descriptors.
  • LXQt: A lightweight Qt-based desktop environment for Linux. I joined in 2026 as a core maintainer, contributing across components such as liblxqt, lxqt-openssh-askpass, and qtermwidget.
  • Neanes: A free and open-source scorewriter for notating Byzantine music in Byzantine notation. I joined in 2023 and soon became a committer, product manager, and GitHub organization administrator. Built with Vue.js, Electron, and TypeScript, it draws on my unique expertise in Byzantine music, typography, and computer science, and I have contributed original algorithms for applying Knuth-Plass line-breaking to Byzantine music notation and for enabling accurate playback of Eastern music scales.

Open Source Contributions

I have commits and pull requests across 30+ projects, from foundational Java infrastructure to systems tools, Linux desktop software, and typography.

Popular repositories Loading

  1. ptools ptools Public

    ptools is collection of Linux utilities for inspecting the state of processes, modeled after the tools by the same name which exist on Solaris/illumos.

    Rust 16 1

  2. byzantine-music byzantine-music Public

    Byzantine musical settings of Orthodox liturgical texts by Basil Crow

    Shell 14 2

  3. antora-default-ui-hugo-theme antora-default-ui-hugo-theme Public archive

    A Hugo theme based on the Antora default UI, with full support for Asciidoctor

    CSS 11 5

  4. update-center-sql update-center-sql Public

    SQLite interface to jenkins-infra/update-center2

    Python 2

  5. artifactory-sql artifactory-sql Public

    Python 2 1

  6. knuth-plass-linebreak knuth-plass-linebreak Public

    Forked from robertknight/tex-linebreak

    JavaScript implementation of the Knuth-Plass linebreaking algorithm

    TypeScript 2