# Co-creator of Keycloak

Source: https://startwithidentity.com/experts/bill-burke/
Last updated: 2026-09-20
License: content by Start with Identity. Cite the source URL.

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## Bio

Bill Burke co-created Keycloak at Red Hat with Stian Thorgersen, founded the RESTEasy project, and was previously chief architect of JBoss. He is a Red Hat fellow.

Profile built from public project and employer records.

## Where their work shows up

The JBoss lineage shows in Keycloak's central premise: authentication belongs outside the application, spoken over a standard protocol, with adapters doing the integration rather than each service rolling its own login. That is unremarkable now and was not when most Java applications shipped their own user table. See the [Keycloak profile](https://startwithidentity.com/vendors/open-source/keycloak/), [OAuth vs OIDC](https://startwithidentity.com/guides/fundamentals/oauth-vs-oidc/), and the [developer recipes](https://startwithidentity.com/recipes/).