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Teus Hagen

Teus

Credits Frank Groeiliken, under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA

Teus Hagen is former chairman and director of NLnet. In 2013 he was inducted in the Internet Hall of Fame as a "Global Connector". He started his career at the Computer Laboratory of the Mathematical Centre (current name: Centrum voor Wiskunde & Informatica), which in the years that followed established itself as the center of European computer networks. He led the small team which was responsible for most actual networking activities. This team contained Jaap Akkerhuis, Piet Beertema, Jim McKie and Daniel Karrenberg.

Teus Hagen initiated the Dutch Unix User Group (NLUUG) and the European Unix User Group (EUUG, later called EURopen) and chaired it from 1980 to 1989. In that role, he started the European Unix Network (EUnet) in 1982 as the EUUG dial-up service. EUnet was the first public wide area network, serving four initial “backbones.” By 1989, the EUnet had grown to include 1,000 sites in 21 countries.

Hagen chaired the NLnet Foundation from 1992 to 2008, and helped NLnet become the first Dutch Internet Service Provider. After its commercial activities were sold off, NLnet transitioned into a public benefit organisation with a global mission to improve the internet.

In 2004, while at NLnet, he became involved with CAcert, a community-driven certificate authority that issues free public key certificates to the public. Hagen helped to enable the growth and development of the CAcert community and free certificate technology. He joined the CAcert board in late 2007 and served as president in 2008.

Hagen was recognized by NLUUG and Usenix for his Open Source contributions.

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