FOSS Localization/About the Authors

Anousak Souphavanh is a computer scientist, an ICT consultant and a GNU/Linux enthusiast. He obtained his B.S. in Computer Science from Binghamton University's Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science, The State University of New York and his Masters in Computer Science from the Rochester Institute of Technology, New York. He was a senior systems administrator, technical lead person and network specialist for IBM in Rochester from 1995 to 2003. In 2003, he was an IT project manager for Jhai Foundation, managing a rural area IT project in Lao PDR. He is currently an IT consultant. He is an author of Laonux (Laonux.muanglao.com), the Lao version of GNU/Linux (KDE). He is also working on several other projects for Lao language: OpenOffice.org, PHPNuke, and Mozilla. He is an active member of the Lao Open Source community. His interest in GNU/Linux led him to initiate the Lao Linux User Group in Vientiane, Laos in 2003. He developed the Lao locale definition for GNU C library. He is also a leading voice on Lao support in GNU/Linux desktops with several working groups.

Theppitak Karoonboonyanan is a member of the Thai Linux Working Group (TLWG). He obtained his B.Eng. (Honors) in Computer Engineering from Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, in 1993.

He has contributed significantly to Thai GNU/Linux localization. His first contribution was an enhanced version of Thai string collation rules based on the Royal Institute's model. He then developed the Thai locale definition for GNU C library based on it. He has contributed to many FOSS projects to establish Thai support infrastructure for GNU/Linux desktop, including XFree86, Pango, GLib, and GTK+.

As a TLWG member, he helped the LibThai project to collect and develop routines for basic Thai Language processing, and currently maintains the Thai LaTeX project and contributes to thaifonts-scalable, a Thai font development project. Also, he tracks the overall status of Thai support in GNU/Linux desktops and occasionally updates the group to keep up the momentum of development.

He was a member of Linux TLE and was among the founding members of GNU/Linux localization project at the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC). Currently, he freelances and has contributed advice and experience to the development of Laonux, a Lao KDE-based GNU/Linux desktop, and developed solutions for other clients.