Erik W. Troan is one of the original authors of RPM Package Manager and the first engineer of Red Hat. RPM Package Manager ( Red Hat Package Manager, abbreviated RPM) is a Package management system. In Computing, Red Hat Inc ( is a company dedicated to Free and open source software, and a major Linux distribution vendor He has since left Red Hat and co-founded rPath, where he is currently the CTO. rPath Inc is a technology company based in Raleigh North Carolina that provides a platform for software vendors to create and maintain Software appliances and A chief technical officer or chief technology officer (abbreviated as CTO) is an executive position whose holder is focused on scientific and technical issues within At rPath, he was an original author of and current maintainer of Conary. Conary is a Free software Package management system created by RPath and distributed under the terms of the Common Public License. He is co-author of "Linux Application Development".