Novell today announced that Alan Clark, senior manager and strategic advisor for industry initiatives at Novell, has been named Gold Level Director of the Linux Foundation board of directors. Clark has served as a member of the Linux Foundation board of directors for several years, having held positions including secretary and chair of the Board Governance and Nomination committees and member of the Compensation and Finance committees. He currently serves as the chair of the Linux Foundation Vendor Advisory Council.
Clark provides the experience needed to effectively contribute to the Foundation's strategic direction, while bringing a keen understanding of the Linux Foundation members' needs. He understands what drives community users and developers and how the commercial Linux ecosystem can engage in productive two-way dialogs with open source communities. Further, Clark continues to strive to set new technical standards, while advocating product interoperability.
"Alan Clark is a proven leader who brings unique insights to the Linux Foundation that will help address the needs and challenges of Linux users, developers, vendors and other ecosystem participants," said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. "He is committed to this industry and to The Linux Foundation as it continues its mission to accelerate the adoption of Linux. We look forward to working with Alan on Linux Foundation events and programs as well as new projects and workgroups to more broadly advocate for Linux across the industry."
Clark is also the openSUSE board chairperson and has served as a founding director for several non-profit organizations. He remains an active participant in numerous open source initiatives and industry projects including the Linux Standard Base, OpenDocument Format, DMTF, Cloud Security Alliance and more.