# Brian Fox ![[50 Resources/51 Attachments/51.03 Public/2026-02-08 Brian Fox.jpg|400]] Brian Fox is an American programmer best known as the original author of [[Bash]] (Bourne Again Shell), the default shell for most [[Linux]] distributions and macOS. He wrote Bash in 1988 while working as the first employee of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), where he worked closely with [[Richard Stallman]]. Beyond Bash, Fox made significant contributions to the GNU project, including the GNU Readline library (used for command-line editing) and GNU Makeinfo. He later co-founded several technology companies and became an advocate for open source software and cryptocurrency. ## Career - **Free Software Foundation** (1985-1994): First employee; created Bash and other GNU tools - **Entrepreneur**: Co-founded multiple companies including UUNET, Orchid Systems - **Cryptocurrency**: Early Bitcoin advocate and blockchain entrepreneur ## Key Contributions - **[[Bash]]**: Created the Bourne Again Shell (1988), now ubiquitous in Unix-like systems - **GNU Readline**: Library for command-line editing used by Bash and many other programs - **GNU Makeinfo**: Documentation processor for Texinfo format - **GNU Info**: Hypertext documentation reader ## References - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Fox_(computer_programmer) ## Related - [[Bash]] - [[Linux]] - [[Free Software Foundation]] - [[Richard Stallman]] - [[GNU]] ## Quotes <!-- QueryToSerialize: LIST FROM #type/quote AND [[Brian Fox]] WHERE public_note = true SORT file.name ASC --> ## Books <!-- QueryToSerialize: LIST FROM #type/book AND [[Brian Fox]] WHERE public_note = true SORT file.name ASC -->