Textbook of Linux

b. 1961, Japan — Git's lead maintainer for two decades

Also known as: Hamano, Junio C. Hamano

Junio C. Hamano has been the maintainer of Git since July 2005 — three months after Linus Torvalds wrote the first version. Torvalds famously said he picked Hamano because Hamano's contributions had the best "taste", a term Torvalds uses to mean well-judged elegance rather than flashy cleverness.

Hamano works at Google's Open Source Programs Office and spends most of his time on Git: reviewing patches, cutting releases (roughly one every three months), maintaining the release notes, and moderating the Git mailing list. He has shaped Git's design more than anyone except perhaps Torvalds himself — notably smoothing away the sharp edges of the early command-line interface and introducing git rebase --interactive, git rev-parse, and many core plumbing commands.

Hamano's public profile is low by design — he is the quiet custodian of one of the most widely used programs in computing.