This profile is the first in what will hopefully be a series of profiles on Samba developers. This month we'll introduce — for those who don't already know him — Andrew Bartlett.

Andrew has been with the Samba Team for 4.5 years now. He's the Team's resident authentication guru, having worked on authentication in both the Samba3 and Samba4 branches. Samba4 is where Andrew's focus lies now, and he is chiefly responsible for Samba4's GENSEC. (See Andrew's white pager on GENSEC, GENSEC - Designing a security subsystem.) Andrew is also responsible for Samba4 auth/, a Heimdal-based KDC, PAC support in the KDC, and the Credentials work (with Jelmer Vernooij).

Andrew had this to say about Samba4:

I want to see Samba4 succeed, but in particular I want to see it as a catalyst for better single sign on solutions that just work. Why is it that MIT is only now getting LDAP and Kerberos integration, and few know about Heimdal? Why is it still so painful to get everything to 'play ball'? I hope to both have Samba4 out there as a 'just works' solution for Linux and Windows alike, as well as a powerful frontend to bigger directories.

Andrew holds a BSEng from ANU. As part of a final year research project, he wrote a thesis on Samba4 and AD (available in pdf here). When not working on Samba, Andrew works part-time as a SysAdmin at Hawker College, a year 11/12 high school, and enjoys riding his bike anywhere he can.

Andrew maintains his own web page at http://samba.org/~abartlet for those who wish to read more about his work or contact him.