Dick Hardt’s blog

A pioneer in the Internet sector and open source software community, Dick has been active in software development for nearly two decades. Prior to founding Sxip Identity, Dick founded ActiveState in 1997. Under his leadership as CEO, ActiveState became a leader in open source programming languages and anti-spam software and was acquired by UK-based software company, Sophos in 2003. His first commercial software work started in 1986 at Consumers Software where he ported one of the first LAN email packages, the Network Courier, to Windows 1.03. He later joined Paradigm Development, which did software consulting for firms such as Aldus, Adobe and Microsoft. In 1993 Dick connected Paradigm to the Internet and later founded hip Communications, which became one of the larger web development and hosting companies in western Canada. While running hip, Dick led the port of Perl 5 to the Windows platform, which resulted in an interest in open source software. hip was sold to a NASDAQ company. As a successful entrepreneur and technology expert, Dick is very involved in the technology community, speaking at numerous conferences and holding a board position with the Vancouver Enterprise Forum. He previously was on the board of the BCTIA and Ludicorp. He is a Business in Vancouver Top 40 Under 40 award recipient. Dick has also demonstrated leadership in funding the Major Projects Fund for the BC Technology Social Venture Partners, a charitable foundation to support groups serving children, women at risk and people living in Vancouver’s downtown eastside. Dick’s blog can be viewed at