Alan Cox is a programmer heavily involved in the development of the
Linux kernel, maintaining the next-to-latest branch (2.2.x), and his own versions of the current branch (signified by an "ac" in the version, for example 2.4.3-ac1). He is commonly regarded as being the "second in command" after
Linus Torvalds himself.
He was one of the people involved in AberMUD.
Cox is employed by Red Hat and lives in Wales.