# Salvatore Sanfilippo ![[50 Resources/51 Attachments/51.03 Public/2026-02-13 Salvatore Sanfilippo.jpg|400]] Italian software engineer known online as "antirez." Creator of [[Redis]], which he developed and led as BDFL for over a decade. Also known for contributions to computer security, including inventing the idle scan technique (implemented by nmap) and writing the hping network security utility. ## Career - **Early career**: Active in computer security from the late 1990s. Created hping and discovered the idle scan technique - **LLOOGG** (2009): Founded Italian startup for real-time web log analytics. Scalability challenges led him to create Redis - **Redis BDFL** (2009-2020): Primary developer and maintainer. Development sponsored successively by VMware (2010-2013), Pivotal Software (2013-2015), and Redis Labs (2015-2020) - **Sabbatical** (2020-2024): Stepped down from Redis to pursue other interests. Wrote "Wohpe", a science fiction novel about AI (published 2022) - **Redis** (2024-present): Returned as Redis evangelist. Developed the Vector Set data structure for vector similarity search ## Notable projects - **[[Redis]]**: In-memory data structure store, one of the most popular databases in the world - **hping**: Network security utility and packet analyzer - **Kilo**: Text editor in under 1000 lines of ANSI C - **Dump1090**: Command-line ADS-B Mode S decoder - **Linenoise**: Minimal alternative to GNU Readline - **Disque**: Distributed in-memory message broker - **Jim Tcl**: Small-footprint implementation of the Tcl programming language ## Quotes <!-- QueryToSerialize: LIST FROM #type/quote AND [[Salvatore Sanfilippo]] WHERE public_note = true SORT file.name ASC --> ## Books <!-- QueryToSerialize: LIST FROM #type/book AND [[Salvatore Sanfilippo]] WHERE public_note = true SORT file.name ASC --> ## Related - [[Redis]] ## References - Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvatore_Sanfilippo - Website: http://invece.org/ - GitHub: https://github.com/antirez