# Daniel Stenberg

> Daniel Stenberg is a Swedish software engineer and the creator of curl and libcurl, tools found on an estimated 20-40 billion devices worldwide - from smartphones and smart TVs to spacecraft and every Windows and macOS installation. A self-taught programmer who began on a Commodore 64 at age 14, he has spent over 25 years maintaining one of the internet's most foundational software projects. He currently works at wolfSSL providing commercial curl support, sits as President of the European Open Source Academy, and contributes actively to internet standards through the IETF. His weekly newsletter chronicles his ongoing work simplifying, securing, and extending curl.

- **Role:** Lead Developer & Maintainer at wolfSSL; President of European Open Source Academy
- **Organizations:** wolfSSL, European Open Source Academy, IETF
- **From:** Huddinge, Sweden
- **Nationality:** Swedish
- **Education:** No formal CS degree; learned programming via Commodore 64 demoscene, IBM internship, and decades of professional practice, Self-taught
- **Known for:** Created curl (1998), now found on an estimated 20-40 billion devices worldwide, curl ships pre-installed on every Windows and macOS system, curl runs in spacecraft, automobiles, smart TVs, IoT devices, smartphones, and web services

## Career timeline

- **1985** — Age 14: co-founded demoscene group 'Confusing Solution' with his brother on Commodore 64
- **1991** — First professional IT role at IBM, learned C and Unix on AIX/RS-6000 systems; started using GNU Emacs
- **1993** — Joined Frontec Railway Systems as C developer for embedded railroad safety systems
- **1996** — Created httpget, a simple HTTP download tool - the earliest ancestor of curl
- **1998** — Released curl 4.0 (March 20, 1998) - the project that would become one of the world's most installed software tools
- **2000** — Developed libcurl, transforming curl into a reusable library for application integration
- **2001** — Co-founded the Rockbox project, open-source firmware for digital audio players
- **2006** — Took over maintenance of libssh2, an SSH library
- **2013** — Joined Mozilla's networking team to work on Firefox HTTP protocols
- **2018** — Left Mozilla after 5 years
- **2019** — Joined wolfSSL (February) to provide commercial curl support, enabling full-time curl work
- **2025** — Became President of the European Open Source Academy
- **2025** — Received IVA Gold Medal from Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences
- **2025** — Named Swedish Developer of the Year
- **2025** — Received European Open Source Achievement Award

## Achievements

- Created curl (1998), now found on an estimated 20-40 billion devices worldwide
- curl ships pre-installed on every Windows and macOS system
- curl runs in spacecraft, automobiles, smart TVs, IoT devices, smartphones, and web services
- 250,000 curl downloads per month from curl.se; 32,000 git repository clones per day
- Co-authored RFCs for HTTP/3 (RFC 9114), HTTP Semantics (RFC 9110), DNS-over-HTTPS (RFC 8484), HTTP/2 (RFC 7540), and more
- Authored free books: 'HTTP/2 Explained' and 'HTTP/3 Explained'
- 2017 Polhem Prize for technological innovation in the cURL utility
- 2025 IVA Gold Medal from Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences
- 2025 Swedish Developer of the Year
- 2025 European Open Source Achievement Award
- 2025 President of European Open Source Academy
- Active IETF contributor in HTTP and QUIC working groups
- Over 25 years of continuous maintenance of a mission-critical open-source project
- Co-founded Rockbox (2001), open-source firmware used on millions of audio players

## Latest updates

- **2026-02** — Presented 'AI: Augmenting humans in two directions' at FOSDEM 2026 in Brussels
- **2025-10** — Received IVA Gold Medal from the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences
- **2025-09** — Named Swedish Developer of the Year
- **2025-08** — Spoke at Open Source Summit Europe in Amsterdam and FrOSCon in Bonn
- **2025-06** — Presented 'Accidental world domination for fun' at Joy of Coding conference
- **2025-01** — Received European Open Source Achievement Award and became President of European Open Source Academy
- **2025-01** — Paused curl bug bounty program due to flood of AI-generated fake vulnerability reports
- **2024-12** — Ongoing initiative to reduce curl codebase complexity - most complex function reduced from score 100 to 59

## Links

- Website: https://daniel.haxx.se
- LinkedIn: https://se.linkedin.com/in/danielstenberg
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/bagder
- GitHub: https://github.com/bagder
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD5eL38hFtSLiVFP9cCUJEA

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/daniel-stenberg
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-04-22