My name is Björn Ricks. I am a software developer at Greenbone living in the north of Germany.

Open Source ¶

I’ve started to contribute to Free Software during my Computer Science studies and got involved in the community of the former OpenSync framework. After a while I did maintain most parts of the CMake based build environment (btw. I never understood autotools and got involved because the project just started to migrate to CMake which I really liked at the time).

At the end contributing to this open source project caused that I met a lot of nice people and joined Intevation to work on free software full time.

Python ¶

Being a C/C++ and Java developer before (and some Basic, Pascal and Delphi as a teenager), at Intevation I’ve started to work with Python (if I remember correctly it was Python 2.5 at that time). While not having interfaces or type definitions, Python felt a bit strange to me first but I began to like it very much. Python allows to write code very fast and easily with batteries included. Shortly after Python became my favorite programming language which it is still today.

For example my current (pet) projects autohooks and pontos are written in Python.

Greenbone ¶

After some more years and working at a different company as a Java EE/JavaScript developer I switched to Intevation’s child company Greenbone. Greenbone is the provider of the most widely used open source vulnerability management solution known as OpenVAS.

At Greenbone I’ve been working in several roles already. From a JavaScript developer responsible for the React based Greenbone Security Assistant Web UI, to a team lead, unit manager and product owner. Currently I am in a software developer role again working on DevOps topics.

Because I care a lot about communities and free software/open source I always try to find some spare time for improving obstacles that are not always product related. Often by writing and extending docs, answering questions in our community forum and reacting to user issues at GitHub.