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Voting Begins for $100k Beanie Awards
So the 2000 Beanie Awards have
now entered phase two: Intense Voting. The
nominees have been chosen in each category by you readers, and now
you get to choose who wins the money in exciting catagories like
'Best Designed Interface in a non graphical application' and
'Best Newbie Helper'. Each category has a discussion so you can talk about your choices all you want. You may change your vote whenever you like. And the final winners will be announced at LinuxWorld in NY in feb.
Alan Cox - Linus' #2 man and maintainer of the stable kernels (2.2.x and 2.0.x).
David Dawes - XFree86 leader
Donald Becker - Wrote nearly ever ethernet driver in the kernel, invented Beowulf
Jordan Hubbard - FreeBSD's leader
Brian Paul - Wrote the Mesa OpenGL-alike library used by eg. Quake, Unreal Tournament, etc.
Too bad Mindcraft wasn't an option for the FUD though. I nominated them, would have voted for them...
Compared to their benchmarks, every other piece of FUD was second rate IMO.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
> Most Improved Open Source Project / Most Improved Kernel Module
> Have you benchmarked it? Done regression testing? Checked the source for comments? No? Then abstain, 'cos you don't know!
What is this nonsense? The concept that you have to be a programmer and look at source code, or run benchmarks to know how a module/project has improved is absurd!
What about driving a car? "This car rides better than a Yugo. It's faster too." What? did you run fifth wheel tests on it to time accelerations? Did you measure suspension travel, and spring rates? No of course not. But you can tell whether something is better by using it:
"Gee, before half my PCMCIA devices didn't work... now they all do"
"Last time I tried GNOME it was barely useable, but now it has every feature I expect of an advanced window manager."
I'd say those are improved....
And don't forget that what's better/worse is an individual opinion! Just because you have one standard of evaluating something as better/worse doesn't mean that others feel the same things are important.
Pico... the 'other' UNIX editor.
:-)
It always seems to get lost among the constant vi vs. emacs holy wars, and the code is (fairly) easy to customize. A job ago, while working at an ISP, I had Pico customized eight ways to Sunday, with automatic comment block generation, line gotos and indentation of C code to my exacting, anal standards. It was fast and efficient and perfect for C coding.
So what if it doesn't have all the features of emacs, or the power of vi? Emacs is like the kid with all the cool toys, and vi's the kid with the Lego. But you always liked to play with Pico best, because he's the kid with the big cardboard box that you would always turn into a little house or racecar. He's the most fun to play with.
---
Tempfiles fugit.
Who's this abstain character?
And why does he/she qualify for the Hemos award?
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
I know it's too late now, but I would like to see write in candidates as well next time. I'm more interested in hearing about who has done what for open source than I really am about who wins. Since the spaces aren't there on the forms, I'd be delighted to hear from people here about people who didn't make the list. They probably didn't have the chance for the widespread recognition necessary to win, but let's mention them publically anyway. I'll start.
I nominated François Pinard, leader of the Free Translation Project for the unsung hero award. He has managed to gather support for the project a little at a time and keep it going largely through his own effort. There are certainly plenty of translators working on many of the individual languages, but he has done the organizational work to connect software projects with translation teams. If you are competent to translate, especially into a minority language, one of the best ways I can think of to thank him is to join or form a translation team.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
I feel that the choices in the different categories are too limited.
/. is purchasing support from well knowns with this contest than awarding excellence (not that excellence is not rampant in the nominations..... Just my opinion and we all know how that goes..)
What we have here is a popularity contest with well known names and is a very poor representation of the thousands of applications/authors/and groups which are out there.
I don't deny that any of the listed people are worthy of the individiual awards, I just feel that the number of choices is too limited. There were lots of good nominations which did not make it to the vote cycle.
This is not meant to be a flame, or perhaps it is... It just seems more and more that this place is becoming a clique culture and very unwelcoming to newcommers.
For this reason, You'll find my vote for abstain in all categories as the nominees are not a fair representation of the many more canidates nominated. It seems more that
They are a threat to free speech and must be silenced! - Andrea Chen
Fish! LipHo
Hemos is shelfish by having the only sure win. Vote Abstain on the Hemos award. Don't let a single vote in for Hemos. Long live abstain!!!
has to be Tom Christiansen under Best Newbie Helper. Unless they count his books as being a newbie helper, Tom Christiansen is about as helpful as throwing a bag of salt on an open wound.
Thanks for making me laugh Slashdot gang!
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
Abstain when you don't know. Don't just go for the one that rings a bell, if you don't know, don't vote.
Most Improved Open Source Project / Most Improved Kernel Module
Have you benchmarked it? Done regression testing? Checked the source for comments? No? Then abstain, 'cos you don't know!
Unsung Hero
Do you know what each of these people has done? Have you done research to find out how "unsung" they actually are? (Alan Cox has been on TV - thats not unsung!)
Best Open Source-Related Book
Have you actually read *all* of these books? No? Well then don't vote, 'cos you don't know!
I could go on, but your smart people, you know what I'm getting at. Don't just vote off the cuff, vote for what you know, and let those who are in the know's votes count by reducing the "noise" and keeping your uninformed opinion out of it. Like me.
Oh, and before I get moderated down as an opiniated know it all, I've abstained on almost everyting, because I'm honest enough to say "I Don't Know".
Thankyou for your time
ThadThad
Really, I appreciate it so much that you voted for me in MASS! I'm almost crying! I called mom and she said, "son, I've never believe you'd make it, but now I'm proud of you!". Thank you all for all those votes! And I'd like to emphasize the fact that this is a team work, that nothing would have been possible without me, myself, and I!
I plan to give most of the money to my crack dealer, who's in a dire need. THANKS AGAIN! (where's that pipe)