Tarus Balog

Tarus Balog (born 1966) is an American open source advocate, software developer, commentator and blogger. He is the lead maintainer of the OpenNMS project.

Balog was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to parents of Hungarian extraction. He spent his childhood in Asheboro, North Carolina. In 1984 Balog graduated from high school at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham.

In September 2001, Balog joined Oculan, which was developing the open-source OpenNMS network management software framework under the leadership of the project's founder and the original chief technologist Steve Giles. His role was to build a business around support and services for OpenNMS, as a complement to Oculan's previous channel-only approach to selling its line of OpenNMS-powered network management appliances.In 2002, Oculan discontinued work on the OpenNMS open-source project, turning its focus solely to its appliance business. Concerned that the project would die without a caretaker, Balog requested to become the new project maintainer. Giles agreed, on the condition that Balog leave Oculan the same week.Balog developed the software project further, gained customers and recruited a group of volunteer core developers while operating as Sortova Consulting Company. Eventually he moved his employment and the OpenNMS assets to a local Internet service provider, where he continued to work on the project until 2004.

In 2004, CEO Balog founded The OpenNMS Group along with the president David Hustace and the chief technology officer Matt Brozowski. With the exception of a five-month period in 2013, Balog has been the company CEO since its founding. The company has its headquarters in Apex, North Carolina, with satellite offices in Georgia in the US, Ontario in Canada and in Germany.

Balog frequently speaks at conferences concerned with open-source software and network monitoring and management.

He has spoken at the Southern California Linux Expo in 2007, 2010 (as keynote speaker) and 2015. In 2009 and 2014, he delivered talks at the Open Source Monitoring Conference in Nuremberg, Germany. He has spoken at SouthEast LinuxFest in 2011, 2013 (delivered keynote) and 2015. Balog spoke at Indiana LinuxFest in 2011 and at Ohio LinuxFest in 2011, 2012, and as keynote speaker in 2017 and speaker .

As of January 2018, Balog has written 14 articles for Opensource.com. In a 2009 blog post, he popularized the term fauxpen source as a satire of the open-core business model.