Software Research

White Oak Labs has decades of research experience in software, operating systems and internet security. We have co-authored some of the most popular open-source software platforms, having millions of users. Extensive experience in software R&D is the foundation of our in-depth capabilities for investigative computer forensics.

XFree86 Window System

Dr. Murphey was a co-founder of The XFree86 Project, Inc., the organization that produces XFree86 window system for Linux, FreeBSD and unix in general. He helped author the by-laws, served as an officer, and member of the board of directors for many years. He was a core team developer for a dozen or so years. Much of that work was focused on platform support for the FreeBSD Unix platform.

Asterisk - VOIP PBX Telephone System

Most recently, Dr. Murphey has contributed to the Asterisk Voice-Over-Internet-Protocol telephone system, and it's support for open source unix systems such as FreeBSD. Asterisk is the most popular open source telephone system available. It offers unmatched extensibility, flexibility, functionality and features, and it competes favorably with commercial enterprise phone systems. Voice Over Internet Phone (VOIP) systems have unique cost competitive advantages over traditional telephony.

Dr. Murphey contributed support for FreeBSD, OSX and related *BSD operating systems to the Asterisk project and it's maintainer, Digium. He currently maintains the Asterisk PBX project's support for the high-performance, open-source FreeBSD Unix platform, a favorite of internet service providers.

FreeBSD Operating System

Dr. Murphey was a core team developer for the FreeBSD Unix operating system from1994 to 2000. However, his involvement began much earlier, in an earlier predecessor system called 386BSD. 386BSD was the first port of BSD Unix to the Intel platform, authored by Bill Jolitz, who was contracted by Berkeley to do the Intel port. Dr. Murphey performed testing and contributed patches to his first "noname" release. Later on, he was involved in a subsequent "patch kit" for 386BSD that accumulated contributions of developers as the following grew. This "patch kit" represented FreeBSD in it's earliest form. Being on the FreeBSD core team was an exciting experience, especially the opportunity to see FreeBSD in use at places like Yahoo and Hotmail in their formative years.

One of Dr. Murphey's principal interests has been FreeBSD's support for the XFree86 window system in the form of console drivers, access to video hardware, general platform support, documentation and release engineering. This form of stewardship was an opportunity to contribute to the productivity of other developers by making it easier for them to use FreeBSD as a desktop.

Blackbox Lite -
a Windows Shell

Dr. Murphey developed Blackbox Lite, a replacement for the Windows XP/Vista/7 shell(taskbar), based on bbLean which is in turn based on Blackbox for Windows. Blackbox Lite enhances the desktop theme for Microsoft Windows. It provides multiple virtual desktops and has hundreds of free styles and extensions. It is free, fast, and open-source.

GNU Graphics

Dr. Murphey was originally the sole author of GNU Graphics, a 2-D vector plotting package developed to create the graphics for his doctoral thesis on cardiac electro-physiology. GNU Graphics is an expanded work-alike replacement for plotting utilities found in commercial versions of UNIX beginning with AT&T Unix Version 7. Dr. Murphey assigned his copyright to the Free Software Foundation and the package was later renamed plotutils.