*You can hardly use a browser, a cellphone, or a game console without relying on...

jgrahamc · on Nov 10, 2009

I believe he's referring to the fact that he was at one time the maintainer of giflib (or libgif) and that he contributed some code to libpng. Since these are, he claims, vital to all those items you mention then we are all using his code.

davi · on Nov 10, 2009

That's right. People asked about this in the comments on the post. His answers are here:

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1404#comment-242133

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1404#comment-242156

Bottom line: libgif and libpng.

tptacek · on Nov 10, 2009

CompuServe described GIF, and then Gershon Elber and I made an open-source implementation that became ubiquitous

Worth noting that multiple years span the time between when Elber actually wrote giflib and when ESR added 2 functions and 3 utilities to it.

tptacek · on Nov 10, 2009

So, the guy who wrote libc strpbrk() then: an industry titan?

(Thanks for the answer though --- I think you're right).