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Born in Farmington Hills, Michigan on November 8th “Bill Joy: 2011 Fellow.” Computer History Museum, 2011, www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/hall/bill-joy/
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Aspired to be a ham radio operator, but his parents disapproved. Standing out through academic excellence, Joy graduated from High School at the age of 16. Featherly, Kevin. “Bill Joy: American Software Developer and Entrepreneur.” Britannica.com, www.britannica.com/biography/Bill-Joy.
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Studied Electrical Engineering as an undergrad at University of Michigan Ann Arbor where he worked on early supercomputers. Source: Featherly, Kevin. “Bill Joy: American Software Developer and Entrepreneur.” Britannica.com, www.britannica.com/biography/Bill-Joy. Photo:https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c6/University_of_Michigan_seal.svg
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Joy moved to UC Berkeley for a master's degree in Computer Science. Ken Thompson came to Berkeley in this time and gave students copies of UNIX to work on and improve. Joy helped in updating UNIX that was running on the DEC at Berkeley. Featherly, Kevin. “Bill Joy: American Software Developer and Entrepreneur.” Britannica.com, www.britannica.com/biography/Bill-Joy. Photo:https://socialwelfare.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/docs/seal_blackwhite.jpg
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After improving UNIX, Joy received orders for versions of "Berkeley UNIX." Because of the success of his Berkeley UNIX, Joy started Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), distributing the source code for free. With this decision, Joy made a huge leap for the open-source movement. Featherly, Kevin. “Bill Joy: American Software Developer and Entrepreneur.” Britannica.com, www.britannica.com/biography/Bill-Joy. Photo: https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/f/free-bsd.jpg
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The federal gov't reached out to Joy's UNIX team and asked them to work on software for the VAX computer that would work in tandem with ARPANET, the project that led to the internet. Joy and his team went head to head with DEC's programmers for a bid to work for DARPA and won the contract. Featherly, Kevin. “Bill Joy: American Software Developer and Entrepreneur.” Britannica.com, www.britannica.com/biography/Bill-Joy. Photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET#/media/File:Arpanet_1974.svg
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Joy was recruited to help kick off a company that wanted to create a desktop workstation that ran UNIX and was affordable. It was called Stanford University Network workstation first, and later changed their name to SUN Microsystems. Featherly, Kevin. “Bill Joy: American Software Developer and Entrepreneur.” Britannica.com, www.britannica.com/biography/Bill-Joy. Photo: http://archive.fortune.com/assets/i2.cdn.turner.com/money/galleries/2010/fortune/1004/gallery.fortune500_moneylosers.fortune
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Joy was awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery, the Grace Murray Hopper Award for his work on the Berkeley UNIX OS “William N. Joy.” Association for Computing Machinery, ACM Inc. , awards.acm.org/award_winners/joy_6968593.
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While working for SUN, Joy was the chief technical strategist, helping to maintain the open-system philosophy of the company. While working there he helped design the SPARC microprocessor, and designed the Network File System. He designed the ULTRASPARK-I and fine tuned its multi-media processing capacity. Featherly, Kevin. “Bill Joy: American Software Developer and Entrepreneur.” Britannica.com, www.britannica.com/biography/Bill-Joy.
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While working at SUN, he was responsible for the initial plans to design Java, the programming language. He helped build the architecture for Java and coauthored its language. When Java released, it was integrated into the Netscape Navigator Web Browser. Featherly, Kevin. “Bill Joy: American Software Developer and Entrepreneur.” Britannica.com, www.britannica.com/biography/Bill-Joy.
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President Bill Clinton chose Joy to be the first of two co-chairman of the Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee. On the committee, Joy helped advocate for increased state-funding for technological advances in order to expand growth of tech in the US. Featherly, Kevin. “Bill Joy: American Software Developer and Entrepreneur.” Britannica.com, www.britannica.com/biography/Bill-Joy.
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Joy was appointed to position of Chief Technologist at SUN. In this new position, he worked on a Java-related technology called Jini, which embeds Java into devices (phones, printers, etc.) to allow them to connect to the internet. Featherly, Kevin. “Bill Joy: American Software Developer and Entrepreneur.” Britannica.com, www.britannica.com/biography/Bill-Joy.
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Joy wrote an article that was published by Wired magazine, titled "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us." This article has been widely talked about and criticized from its publication to the modern day. Joy argued that technology has the potential to destroy humanity, referencing Moore's Law. Featherly, Kevin. “Bill Joy: American Software Developer and Entrepreneur.” Britannica.com, www.britannica.com/biography/Bill-Joy.
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Joy made a decision to leave the company he founded behind, it is speculated this could be related to his evolving ideas surrounding technology. Featherly, Kevin. “Bill Joy: American Software Developer and Entrepreneur.” Britannica.com, www.britannica.com/biography/Bill-Joy.
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Joy became a partner with a venture capital firm. While there he helped develop strategies that focus on funding climate change and sustainability technologies. Featherly, Kevin. “Bill Joy: American Software Developer and Entrepreneur.” Britannica.com, www.britannica.com/biography/Bill-Joy.
