Slashdot is Giving Away $100,000

So to kick off the new year, Andover.Net decided that we ought to give away a lot of money. We're excited to announce the 2000 Slashdot Beanie Awards. No, we're not giving away 2000 beanies, but we are giving away prizes ranging from $30k for Most Improved Open Source Project to $10k awards for things like Unsung Hero and Best Community Advocate. You can read the awards index, where you can also discuss the categories as well as place your nominations. Or you can read on to see a list of awards and a description of the nomination and voting process. Nomination Let's be honest here. If Hemos and I sat down in a room and tried to pick the nominees for each catagory ourselves, either we would have the five members of Monty Python nominated for every category or only one of us would emerge from the room alive. And then whoever lived would get flamemail because we forgot to include Carol Cleveland (who really deserved to be nominated for Best Unix Eyecandy).

We didn't want to deal with that. So instead we've opened up the nominations. Each registered Slashdot user is allowed to nominate one person or project in each category. Each category will have a Slashdot discussion attached to it where you can chit chat about the nominees. And everyone can change their vote as many times as they want (until the nominations close in 2 weeks).

The nominations are blind... you can't see who is winning until...

Voting Voting will function the same way. You can talk amongst yourselves, and each registered user is allowed one vote which can be changed all you want until we close the contest. The winners will be announced at the next LinuxWorld in New York. The Categories The Grand Prize ($30,000)

• Most Improved Open Source Project

Ten Thousand Dollar Awards

• Most Improved Kernel Module
• Unsung Hero
• Best Newbie Helper
• Most Deserving Open Source Charity
• Best Open Source Advocate

Two Thousand Dollar Awards

• Best Unix Desktop Eyecandy
• Best Unix Desktop Earcandy
• Best Desktop Theme
• Best Open Source-Related Book
• Best Perl Module
• Best Apache Module
• Best Open Source Text Editor
• Best Deserving of a $2,000 Award
• Best Designed Interface in a Graphical Application
• Best Designed Interface in a Non-Graphical Application

Why The Hell Nots (A Beanie, and a Hug from CowboyNeal)

• Best Dressed
• Favorite Slashdot Comment Poster
• Favorite Slashdot Author
• Best Slashdot Story of 1999
• Big Dumb Patent Bully
• Big Dumb Domain Bully
• Clue Stick Award for FUD in Journalism
• The Hemos Award (only Hemos is eligible)

Comments

Why not Most Interesting New Idea?

[Zigg]

Seems to me that a large portion of the Open Source stuff out there is just rewriting things that've already been invented. The people who are inventing new things don't get the attention they deserve.

Why not give an award for new ideas? If Open Source wants to survive, it needs to innov... inn... innova... invent new things. (Sorry, couldn't bring myself to say it... the term has been tarnished forever...)

Re:Why not Most Interesting New Idea?

[jd]

Some innovative projects going on for Linux:

• I have to include ReiserFS. It's a novel way of approaching the filesystem philosophy, and it works very well.
• The Free Film Project - whilst some of the components exist already, there hasn't been any co-ordinated effort to produce drama on this kind of scale in an Open Source environment.
• EvStack and GGI deserve an honorable mention for innovation.
• ExoPC warrants some mention as an innovative Open Source OS. It's a whole new approach to OS design, taking the microkernel concept to the point where there are actual significant gains.

Maybe I'm just weird,

[draco ni]

maybe I just got to work too early, but the first thing that popped to mind when I read that title was that slashdot was giving away $100k worth of Beanie Babies.


I'm glad to see I was wrong. :)

Re:Maybe I'm just weird,

[remande]

If you can imagine a Beanie Baby like a Victoria's secret bra, yup, you're weird.

Unsung Hero - Mike Heins

[fragermk]

I've nominated Mike Heins as a unsung hero in open source software. His package, Minivend (www.minivend.com), is important to e-commerce behind the scenes and rivals the most expensive propietary systems. He works very hard on this software and releases it all under the GPL.

Best Open Source Advocate should be Microsoft

[dustpuppy]

The very existence of Microsoft, its software, and its tactics continues to provide the drive and energy for Open Source gurus to continue churning out the superior software.

It also drives the many passionate fans of Open Source to keep promoting the virtues of Open Source.

Without the Evil Empire, the whole Open Source movement would be without a focal point and without direction!

All hail Microsoft for creating the environment where a whole new culture could develop and thrive!!

hey...

[Zurk]

how bout contributing $100K to freshmeat so they can mirror all the opensource projects on their site ? That way, if a website shuts down we dont loose that project forever...and its a helluva lot better than giving it away for nothing.

you know, I don't really like this idea

[tap]

"Person most deserving $2000" What kind of award is that? Better to call it best ballot stuffer. Unsung hero? If no one knows about someone's work, who is going to know to vote for them?

I always hated school sponsored popularity contests, where all the jocks and cheerleaders get to give themselves awards and see who had the most friends. Is this really all that different? Doing stuff like this creates resent among all those who feel left out. Especially since most open source work is a group effort, to single one person out is a slap in the face to all those whose work is ignored.

I suppose none of this matters, since we already know who will get all these awards, Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox, Larry Wall, Apache, XFree86, etc.

A contest designed for Red Hat, Debian, and GNOME

[Anonymous Coward]

Being some of the only Linux groups that get favorable postings on Slashdot, I'm sure members of the three groups in the subject will be pleased. And I'm sure the rest of us can go pound sand.

I, for one, will not be voting for this very reason. Slashdot occasionally presents an even handed view of the Linux landscape, but the congretation here is so biased I find it odd that Andover.net would authorize something like this contest to take place. It's like opening up a vote on whether gun control is a good idea knowing that only NRA members have received word of the contest. This contest is guaranteed to be skewed.

Don't even get me started on all the perl hackers out there who -- as we speak -- are customizing their scripts to help skew the results.

If Andover was serious about this contest, it would set up another web site (rumor has it that it's an Internet company, after all), leave the Slashdot moniker off of it, then let ALL Linux news sites carry word of its existence and let the community in general vote. Without that, I can't take this contest seriously.

Flame away...

This is very very cool! However....

[Ken Broadfoot]

We are very aware there are some very good coders out there...

What we need to do with awards like this is support the folks who write howtos and help pages and even books about Linux and open source.

Some of us, ( I am thinking of me ) used to be great C and ASM coders back about 15 years ago and now ( at least me ) is far to tired to keep up with you young smart dudes. However i want to and am going to write a few articles and perhaps a newbie book about Linux.


I recognize your skills.. i used to have them but they are gone. But I am sure I can write...

In your awards consider those folks too.

Open Source - Schmopen Source

[overflow]

Seriously, I agree with the other posts. What happened to Slashdot the news organization? I'm getting sick of Slashdot the open source advocate.

Not that I'm against open source, but you guys have gone way off course. Suck.com's parody was right on target when one of the headlines read "Linux possibly defamed somewhere"

"News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." Not anymore.

- overflow

Re:Open Source - Schmopen Source

[harmonica]

What's the problem? Andover.net has made a lot of money and they're contributing some of it for a good purpose. That's great! No need to rant...

Re:Open Source - Schmopen Source

[sdt]

"Looks like the folks at WorldForge want some of the golden nuggets the emporer might leave behind."

I can't stand this sort of reply. I posted that comment with no intentions other than voicing my opinion, and instantly I get alleged of writing this comment to, as you so put it, "kiss ass" for WorldForge at Andover.net.

Sure, it would be cool if WorldForge got this prize, but I don't believe it will, mainly due to the tiny amount of people that are actually familiar with the project.

I spend a lot of my time coding for WorldForge and put a lot of effort in the project, but I do have a life outside WorldForge. Just because it's in my signature, doesn't mean every single comment I post here is related to WorldForge.

Too bad it isn't run as a real contest

[Smack]

What's the point of retroactively awarding people? Why not use the money as an incentive to coders, like a contest?

Especially since there are glaring problems in the categories. The first issue is the ones where I can already pick the final winner.

Big Dumb Patent Bully == Amazon
Big Dumb Domain Bully == etoys
Clue Stick Award for FUD in Journalism = MSNBC

Is there any point to these, when all they'll do is attract flamebait?

Then there's the ones where 90% of the voters will go "Huh??". Like:

Best Perl Module
Most Improved Kernel Module
Best Newbie Helper

Does the standard Slashdot reader have any clue on these? Personally, I can't even suggest a single nomination off the top of my head.

So wouldn't this money be better served by using it for a CONTEST? That $30,000 for "Most Improved Open Source Project" is one hell of an incentive for the lone coder to get off their ass and start developing. Instead we'll probably just award some crappy half assed Microsoft UI imitator that has a lot of name recognition. *cough* KDE *cough* Go Slashdot!

Some Rationale

[FreeUser]

I didn't nominate too many categories, but the following rationale applies three of those I did:

Most Improved OS Project: Livid (the Linux DVD Project) - Not only has playing DVDs under Linux gone from a pipe-dream to reality (if still a little rough around the edges) in a very short time, but with the help of DeCSS/css-auth it could be ready for prime time in the very near future. Additonally, the project is very important for the consumer/desktop usability of Linux, and could use the $10k cash to fend off additional legal thuggary from the DVD Forum.

Best UNIX desktop earcandy: xmms - the audio app I use more often than my television or stereo. (Though Myth2 Soul Blighter was a temptation)

Clue Stick Award for FUD in Journalism: Declan McCullagh of Wired -- not only did this person's poor reporting precipitate serious legal troubles for developers of css-auth (the Linux DVD css component), but he remained unapologetic throughout and, even worse, followed up with even more damaging FUD after having been informed of the errors in his reporting. His behavior on the livid development mailing list was unprofessional and reprehensibe, where he even went so far as to flame Livid developers without provocation. I only wish the archives were still up to link to here ...

Re:Some Rationale

[0xdeadbeef]

Oh man, that McCullagh guy is a jerk. I found the Livid archive at
http://livid.on.openprojects. net/pipermail/livid-dev/. You can see his posts in the Nove mber archive.

$100,000.00 - for the love of humanity

[MrPlab]

Not only was I shocked to see Andover buy Slashdot from the geeks, but I am even more shocked to see the amount of money they're putting into it. Sure, Slashdot is good publicity for Andover, as we all know Slashdot has a large, and somewhat dedicated following. Having looked at the pictures of Andover's area at a few conferences / events in the Linux world, and couldn't help but laugh at the Slashdot sign, tilted up for all to see. It's quite interesting that a website that started as a fun way for Malda to show the world about Linux, and the news that surrounded it, became a website that is sponsored by a huge company with lots of money, and a website that is gaining more and more attention everyday.

Don't get me wrong, I love Slashdot, and I commend each and every person who's put work into the Slash code and who has made Slashdot into what it is today, but I think that if Andover can afford $100,000 for a simple contest, the amount Malda, Bates and Oostendorp (sorry if I spelt that wrong) are getting should also be remotely close to that high figure. By the way the authors post on Slashdot, this high figure is not being received.. unless they just don't want us to know that they make 3 times the amount of the prizes in the "Beanie Awards".

Slashdot for me used to be a place where I didn't have to worry about commercializing everything available, but now I see it as a de-sensitized company jumping on the bandwagon of all the other profitable websites. Too bad this one story changed my point of view.

Matthew
_____________________________________

best dressed, silly :-)

[gnarphlager]

I was trying to think of what I'd qualify for. Most people don't know who the hell I am, and usually people aren't too kind to my postings (after all I don't like South Park ;-), so I figured that I have to qualify for best dressed. Why? Let me count the ways:

• my large collection of silk paisly shirts. Paisly is ALWAYS cool :-)
  
• black buttondown with black tie and somehow look neither goth nor Johnny Cash.
  
• proud owner of the Ugliest Jacket Known To Man(tm) . . . I'd show it to you, but you likely won't want to see it ;-)
  
• 1999 was the end of a long reign for one pork pie hat, and the beginning of a new one. Corderoy this time. How can you go wrong?!?!?!
  
• t-shirts ranging from O'Reily, to Sluggy Freelance, to Swans. Something for everyone
  
• because you know you should love me *bats eyelashes*
  

so vote for me. I'll give you a cookie. One per vote if I win :-)

Monty Python...

[mbrooks]

C'mon, guys, why link to the domain of some slob trying to get the Python people to buy a domain from him? Link to the real site.

--Matt

Advogato for best open source advocate

[raph]

I nominate Advogato for best open source advocate. While the better-known open source advocates have been racking up major publicity points for themselves and doing the impossibly hard work of selling big business the idea of software that doesn't cost them anything, Advogato has been working for the most part quietly to help the community of open source developers, the people who actually write all this code the rest of you are so fond of evangelizing.

P.S. The rules said nothing about nominations not being allowed to be self-serving :)

Awards Nominations

[Anonymous Coward]

• Most Improved Kernel Module: FreeBSD's Linux emulation module.

• Unsung Hero: In descending order:
  • Kirk McKusick, for his more than two decades of tireless service and personal sacrifices for our community.
  • Gurusamy Sarathy, Perl project release manager, responsible for bringing fork(2) to Microsoft ports of Perl and a million other things to make Perl code truly robust and portable between Microsoft and Unix platforms, a true Godsend for those of us forced to co-exist on both.
  • Malcolm Beattie, for trailblazing the Perl-to-C compiler, the Perl external byte-code interpreter, the first Perl/Tk implementation,threading in Perl, and safe blackbox compartments for mobile agents in Perl.

• Best Newbie Helper: Mike Stok from comp.lang.perl.misc. He is patient and kind, never chiding nor arrogant. He has been doing this job for many years.

• Most Deserving Open Source Charity: The Usenix Association. They don't take sides. They promote technology and open standards while remaining vendor neutral. They promote all aspects of advanced technology, but are especially supportive of open source solutions. No organization has done more to legitimize us over the last twenty-five years.

• Best Open Source Advocate: Larry Wall. He doesn't rant against anyone, tries to help everyone, and gives his code away for use by anyone, even Microsoft users. He doesn't restrict his good works to things that only benefit his friends. He doesn't preach, but lives by example.

• Best Unix Desktop Eyecandy: The newest version of the randomizing X screensaver. It's really great in a room full of people on acid.

• Best Unix Desktop Earcandy: The following entry in one's .Xdefaults file:

  *visualBell: on

• Best Desktop Theme: ShinyMetal

• Best Open Source-Related Book: In order of highest to lowest, all worthy of the award:
  • Writing Apache Modules with Perl and C by Lincoln Stein and Doug MacEachern.
  • Damian Conway's Object-Oriented Perl.
  • Elements of Programming With Perl by Andrew L. Johnson.

• Best Perl Module: Damian Conway's Class::Multimethods module for traditional OO in Perl.

• Best Apache Module: mod_perl; how can there be any question?

• Best Open Source Text Editor: The vim editor (vi improved), complete with its gvim graphical incarnation and its perl and python plug-ins.

• Best Deserving of a $2,000 Award:
  1. The late, great Rich Stevens's children's college fund
  2. Larry Wall's children's college fund
  3. Dennis Ritchie's retirement fund.
  (Perhaps those count as charities :-)

• Best Designed Interface in a Graphical Application:
  1. The eesh shell for controlling Enlightenment.
  2. The ddd debugger
  3. MacOS X's environment.

• Best Designed Interface in a Non-Graphical Application:
  1. The {Free,Open}BSD ports collection: being able to just cd and type make and have everything happen is the best thing that ever happened to third-parts apps.
  2. The make menuconfig directive for building Linux kernels.
  3. The v4.0 trn newsreader, with scoring and plug-ins.

• Best Dressed: Larry Wall, whether he's wearing Hawaiian shirts, tie-dies, or best of all, his outlandish, pastel-coloured tuxedos.

• Favorite Slashdot Comment Poster:
  1. Guy Harris
  2. Tom Christiansen
  3. Enoch Root
  4. Jay Maynard

• Favorite Slashdot Author: David Brin wins this one hands down.

• Best Slashdot Story of 1999: Eric Raymond's story about viruses on Microsoft vs Unix.

• Big Dumb Patent Bully: Amazon, followed by Unisys.

• Big Dumb Domain Bully: NSI, followed by Etoys.

• Clue Stick Award for FUD in Journalism: Slashdot.

Unsung Hero nomination: Mark Pauline

[bons]

who?
Mark Pauline: Head of Survival Research Laboratories and fundrasing manager for the etoy projects. His projects have been an inspiration to hardware and software hackers alike, blowing away anything you can make with a lego mindstorm. (You try shooting two-by-fours at a high rate of speed with legos...)

Mark Pauline is the Bob Geldorf of cool technology projects. Where would we be without him pushing the limits?

By the way. Toywar is up and running

Re:$100k = $102400,

[Foogle]

uh-oh, looks like somebody forgot to take his humor-pills this morning... Better fix it quick with a hefty dose of sarcastic anal-suppositories.

-----------

"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

Re:We need more posters like you!

[Kurt Gray]

I wish you'd log into the nominations forum
and post these there because your list has some
of the best suggestions I've seen so far and
yet this needs to be posted in the niminations
forums not here.

ZD interns

[Money__]

The ZD net interns.

Allow me to be one of the many, many people to nominate the Ziff-Davis (ZD Group) in it's many forms.

Their particular style of "rip and read" journalism, and complete lack of objectivity over the years, has earned them the respect and honor of only the most "clue starved" trolls all over the world. It is my belief that this perverse propagation of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) puts the ZD Group among the front runners in the race for a firm twack with the /. Cluestick.

More to the point, I would like to nominate the hard work and dedication of the many ZDnet interns who (like so many sweatshop workers in a Nike factory) tirelessly toil to cut and paste microsoft press releases into Jerry Bursts' article of the day.

ZDs' blatant pursuit of mediocrity makes them a prime candidate for The Cluestick Award for FUD in Journalism.
_________________________

I nominate myself for best-dressed

[technos]

I hearby announce my candidacy for 'Best dressed'.

Some of you may be asking yourself why you should vote for me. Simple. Best dressed isn't what label you wear, whither or not the cufflinks are real gold, etc. It's how you use attitude to make the look work.

Speaking as someone who successfully pulled off wide lapelled mohair at the formal company Christmas party, combat boots and leather jacket at innumerable weddings, and constantly gets positive comments about his misuse of military-surplus gear in the corporate work environment, I feel I deserve the award.

Game category!

[ZandramasX]

Look, we all know that we spend more time playing games than most of these other things combined... so how about a category for best freely available game?

Thanks for the link!

[FreeUser]

Thanks for the link. The one in my bookmarks was no longer valid, and I couldn't find it on the new livid sight.

Heh. Fancy that.

[Chris Johnson]

Oddly enough, I'd put up everything graphical I could come up with, _months_ ago. I didn't do this because I wanted to get an award, or because I thought anybody was going to jump around cheering: I did it because it was the right thing to do.

I made a point of producing all these textures in .xpm format (_months_ ago) so they could be native Linux tiles and background textures. On the agenda, I need to go make .bmp versions of everything available for the underprivileged- I didn't know until recently that Windows could not use a simple gif or jpg as a background unless the hapless Windows user turned on Active Desktop.

All these things are absolutely original work, put out there just to use with no strings attached and the sincere request of 'Just don't claim these as your own OK?'.

http://www.airwindows.com/desktops/index.html- Desktop pictures

http://www.airwindows.com/graphics/backgrounds/ind ex.html- Tiling backgrounds

http://www.airwindows.com/graphics/tiles/index.htm l- Window manager tiles, including treatments such as vertically tiling effects and 3D effects, plus stuff like wood tiles with binding like on a guitar

http://www.airwindows.com/graphics/titlebars/index .html- Intended as Window Maker titlebars, very likely usable in other WMs as well

http://www.airwindows.com/graphics/webgifs/index.h tml- Textured but undistracting 'paper' backgrounds. All available in .xpm as well: designed to be completely compliant with the Web Safe 216 color palette.

Anyone griping about there being gifs should be pleased that at least I don't have Windows .bmps yet ;) well, whatever. I'm sure Enlightenment is going to win or something, but I don't care- I have been fighting for a loan to get an ADAT recorder (to help people record unauthorized music and put out mp3s ;) ) and will keep on doing so. If I win $2000 I pledge I will buy a x86 Linux box to go with my PPC dualboot :)

Cheers, slashdotters. *back to real life*

Alright. Who is Carol Cleveland?

[slothbait]

...I can't find any information on this person

Slashdot throwing money around? Remember back when Malda was a poor college kid? My how thing have changed.

--Lenny

Re:Alright. Who is Carol Cleveland?

[lordsutch]

I'm pretty sure she was the main female on Monty Python; see her Everything entry. You can also see her filmography at IMDB.

Once again, the linux bias is in full glory

[Hoe]

it has been obvious for a long time, that when the writers on slashdot think opensource, they are actually just thinking linux. and this is why i have been reading slashdot less and less, and will certinaly not be wasting my time voting on these stupid categorys.

where is the support for the tiny, just starting out, os's? why do the writers for slasdot still keep disilusioning themselves that linux is best for EVERYTHING, when it clearly is not? (infact, nothing is)

Re:Once again, the linux bias is in full glory

[Tom Christiansen]

it has been obvious for a long time, that when the writers on slashdot think opensource, they are actually just thinking linux. and this is why i have been reading slashdot less and less

That was very well said. Thank you. And while I can't *exactly* moderate it up, perhaps this will help. (And don't rag on me: I've never done this before. I think it's an important point.)

And the answer is . . .

[gnarphlager]

Carol Cleveland was the girl who was part of the Monty Python troupe. According to the bio from the Flying Circus card set (hey, if I wasn't a geek, I wouldn't be here!!!)

Carol was born in London but moved to America at age five. She was schooled in Texas and California before returning to England in 1960 to study at R.A.D.A. Her early tv credits include The Saint, The Avengers, Man in a Suitcase, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and the comidies Doctors at Large, Father Dear Father and The Two Ronnies.
Aside from her appearances in the Monty Python's Flying Circus series for BBC, she has been featured in all the Python films, stage shows and record albums, becoming known as The Python Girl
More recently she has been seen in Are You Being Served? and Only Fools and Horses. She has done much stage work, covering a wide variety of comedy drama and pantomimes. She has also written and performed her own one-woman show entitled Carol Cleveland Reveals All, an autobiographical and humorous look at the glamour business.

and now you know the rest of the story ;-)

Are you sure this is gonna work?

[kwclarkontheroad]

Should only take a couple hundred lines (less?) of perl to: (1) Create unique yahoo email account. (2) Create ./ account using this email account. (3) Fetch POP mail from yahoo and parse ./ password. (4) Logon to ./ and cast vote of choice (5) Goto (1) Perhaps these should be named "best script kiddie" award? Ken

Re:You're a cynical sad little troll

[Kurt Gray]

1. The nomination process is wide open so
you are welcome to login and make your case for
whoever your feel deserves the money more than
the usual well-known projects. Imagine that you
could actually post a persuasive argument to help
an under-funded project which you depend on rather
than standing on the sidelines and bitching that
nobody does anything for open source developers.

2. You have to be logged in to vote. I'm not sure
about the internals but I'm sure this is because
there is code under here that will specifically
exclude any vote bots.

3. Andover doesn't allow other Linux news sites to
carry word of these awards??? What are you high?
This was sent out as a press release today and is
already announced on LinuxToday.

So you're the type who doesn't vote because you
feel democracy doesn't work, right? Nice attitude.
Glad to have you in the community. I'm sure all
the open source projects whose software you
depend on really appreciate having you do nothing
on their behalf. They ought to be thanking you.

To think about

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing that crosses my mind when considering these awards are paying tribute to the coders/reverse engineers who have provided us with open source programs that allow us to use gadgets that are released with closed source Windows XX and Mac software only:

So here goes:

"The Snowblind Alliance" --
The fine folks whom without I could not use Linux to transfer files to my portable MP3 software.

"Anyone Involved with Video4Linux" --
All the way from the Kernel modules right down to the application level programs (XawTV, Kwintv) we could give out 3 or 4 of these awards to the people who let me watch TV in Linux while I surf the Web....

"Grip - Mike Olipant"
Anyone who rips MP3's in Linux, knows that this GTK based app is as good as they come in any operating system.

"CDRecord - Joerg Schilling"
Without this valuable tool, that $250.00 CD-RW player/recorder you just bought would be about as good and useful in Linux as that first 1 or 2 speed CD Drive you payed the same $250.00 for 10 years ago.

"Sane - David Mosberger-Tang "
It's really nice to be able to scan with Linux rather than have to maintain a dual boot...

"PHP - The PHP team "
The open source hammer that ensures we do not have to use inferior operating systems to provide easy access to corporate data stores or build dynamic web pages....(Perl is good...but is not quite as easy as PHP)

"Any Linux propaganda or news reporting award on the list should go to Joe Barr and Nicholas Petreley at Linux world....They do a great job in covering the items the rest of us can't find the words to describe...."


The above items (and many others I did not list) are crucial to widespread desktop acceptance of Linux. I did not list many server related items because I believe that any *nix has always been the logical choice for server realted tasks anyway...So in my mind the market is already won.

IMHO

Why only support big projects?

[athmanb]

Sure, projects like KDE/Gnome (no flamewar please) or Mozilla are important, but they are sponsored enough by other sources, we don't need to support them that badly.
What is needed more IMHO is support for all those small coders who use a few weeks of their spare-time to write useful utilities for free (the type of software which would be distributed as 20$ shareware under Windows).

So why not create a foundation?
If the money was invested with a 10% interest, we would have roughly 5000$ dollars per half year available.
We could then have a /. poll every six months giving out five 1000$ prizes...

Re:screen

[Robert S Gormley]

screen rocks... specially for IRC... though BitchX has it's own screen manager built in :)

Try reading their website!

[jd]

I don't know why I bother to reply to trolls, but I will anyway.

(* Sigh! *)

Exokernels are =NOT THE SAME= as Microkernels, although they borrow from the same basic idea. They take it to new heights, though, putting -everything- but the kitchen sink in User Space, rather than Kernel Space.

This gives you the same benefits of Microkernels, but without the drawback. By having only an absolute minimum in Kernel Space, you don't have the context switching overhead that Microkernels had, which slowed them down. Instead, you only dive into kernel space when absolutely necessary. The practical upshot is that you get even fewer context switches than you do in a monolithic kernel, so you're not wasting as much time on such trivia.

In the benchtest on their website, ExoPC was shown to be nearly 1,000 times faster than FreeBSD at basic network operations. That's not a bad speed improvement, given FreeBSD is hardly a laggard.