Phillip Greenspun is an influential figure in computer science history and is the author of SQL for Web Nerds. He was a professor at MIT for a long period of time and holds an Airline Transport Certificate. He is also the founder of the Scalable Systems for Online Communities research group at MIT, which amassed him a fortune of twenty million dollars. This is an open source software company that is best known for its support of online public communities and Greenspun himself has been involved in multiple start up communities. He is a firm believer that the inflation of tuition is corrupting school systems and that MIT has the possibility to become tuition free. In fact, he famously during a lecture began paying students for their time spent studying in his class at MIT. Over all, from his site online, he claims to always attempt to learn new things and continues to believe that good education can be provided for free.