The Short Version

• Mohammed J. Kabir (prefers to be called Kabir, listen)
• Calls Sacramento, CA home since 1990 but originally from Bangladesh
• First job - System Specialist @ Berkeley Design (founded by UC Berkeley dean & researchers, 1995)
• Founded following software startups:
  • SacSoft - first startup with a $25/license product for MS DOS  (1993-1994)
  • Integration Logic, Inc. - partnered with Lance and Phil (1997-1999)
  • Intevo, Inc. - same partners; venture funded by Grey Global (1990-2001)
  • EVOKNOW, inc. - my current company  founded in 2002
• Extensively wrote books on Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP/Perl (LAMP) platform since 1996. Below are some of my books; most of which have been published in all major world languages.
  1. CGI Primer (1996)
  2. Apache Server Bible
  3. Apache Server Administrator’s Handbook
  4. Red Hat Linux 7 Server
  5. Red Hat Linux 8 Server
  6. Red Hat Linux 9 Server
  7. Red Hat Linux Administrator’s Handbook
  8. Apache Server Bible II
  9. The SuSue Linux Server
  10. Secure PHP Programming
  11. Red Hat Security and Optimization
  12. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3

I consider myself very fortunate for all the blessings I had and continue to have in my life. As a first-gen American, I am thankful for all the opportunities and the American way as I understand it — hard work and talent driven living without any handouts.

My preferred technology platform is open source since I find it as the only way for a small startup to complete in a level playing field  — outside the realm of trade secrets, software patents and costly partnership licenses to tightly guarded source code — with the big enterprises. Open source is an true enabler and I continue to promote it when applicable. However, I do maintain a healthy respect for the other side — the world of Warcraft — I mean — Microsoft. :)

Contacting Me

Small Business Owners: I am interested in helping you with tech matters. Contact me.
Recruiters: Sorry, I am not looking for a job. Please do not contact me.

The Very Long Version

I immigrated to America in 1990 as a nineteen year old and have been calling Sacramento, CA my home ever since. My life experience is heavily influenced by the elements of American philosophy and lifestyle that caters to humanity, freedom of speech and freedom to excel. My roots originate from Bangladesh; as the only son, I was brought up by two loving parents. My value system has been significantly influenced by my mother who was loved by most people around her. I consider myself extremely blessed as I had great parents, excellent teachers from the very early age. I learned to speak and write reasonably good English since 8th grade thanks to an outstanding teacher, a good friend of my father, who took it upon himself to teach me using his unusual approaches. The very first thing he did to teach me English was to ask me to open a window and toss out my English to Bangla dictionary. I am forever grateful him.

Growing up in Bangladesh in the 80s was not likely to be anyone’s highlight years. However, I had a very interesting up bringing. As a fairly smart kid with regional top talent scholarship in the bag, I was unknowingly setting up some high expectations in the minds of my family and well wishers since the very beginning. Unfortunately, I disappointed them deeply as it turned out that I was not exactly the best when it came to a faulty third-world education system that rewarded memorization over problem solving skills.

Fortunately, I was exposed to computer programming in my teenage years while in Bangladesh! My first personal computer, Sinclair Spectrum ZX came with 128KB of total RAM! I learned to hack computer games, create sprites by peeking and poking bytes of memory, write fortune-telling programs, draw MoonRaker models using my very own 2D CAD-like drawing program. Even though I had made a number of attempt to get others to notice my computer skills, it failed to outcast the shadows I created by not making it anywhere near the so called “Marit Lists” in the nationally scored high school exams. Who could blame my well wishers when the teachers were expecting me to be in the top-10 in a country obsessed with high school marit list standing more than the state of its GDP.

Fortunately, I was never discouraged from tinkering with computers. Around the age of sixteen I thought I had found my true calling — writing code. I was facinated by computers so much that I decided to figure out how these machines were made. Naturally, this lead me to America. I enrolled in California State University, Sacramento as an undergrad in the spring of 1990 and my passion for technology found peers! My ex-roommate, who later became Department of Defence (DOD) contractor, and I explored Motorola 68K processors, AT&T 3B15s, Intel PLDs, Xilinx FPGAs to come up with something new. More often we zapped our phone lines with miscalculated RC circuits; our very own operating system was named Hornet Operating System for Educational Development (HOSED) which was hosed most of the time due to bad pointer arithmetic. But it was the best learning experience anyone can have.

I wrote my very first “commercial software” in my third semester as a computer engineering student. It was a simple MS DOS tool called Reminder that allowed multiple user sharing a PC manage their reminders. Here is the product announcement I made in a MS-DOS FTP site in 1993.

When the computer booted, the Reminder program started from the AUTOEXEC.BAT file and asked the user who she was and showed pending reminders if any. I wrote this mostly to teach a friend PASCAL, which was my language of choice at the beginning of my formal computer schooling days. Back in those days there weren’t any Web sites — only FTP and Gopher sites — so we put a shareware version on a FTP server in Finland. After a month or so we got a $25 check from a professor in Finland asking us to do good on our promise to provide a fully licensed version that included a written manual. This was a shock to us. We did not write the manual yet. With another friend’s help, the manual was written in days using then state of the art word processing tool called WordPerfect. Following this we received a number of payments which allowed us to eat pizza and buy more books on our new interest at the time — how to program serial ports using C.

CSUS in the early 90s was a great place; I managed to land a student job as a technical manager responsible for many labs; there were only two students who had this job and the other guy was an ex-submariner in the US Navy, who later become a senior project partner with me.

My very first real job outside school was with Berkeley Design. I met a well known computer hacker, Phil Lepsley, who happened to be my supervisor and also the co-founder of the company. I quickly learned Perl to automate my work. When Phil decided to start something new involving smart chips, I also decided to leave the company. I returned to Sacramento with my first Perl book contract and a large Web development contract with a financial institution in San Diego, CA. Life was great.

TO BE CONTINUED.