OSI Announces Open Source Awards

JohnGrahamCumming writes "There's a story running on ZDNet about how OSI is going to be giving Open Source Awards with cash prizes of up to $10,000. The idea is to create the "Nobel Prizes" of Open Source. Announcement was made yesterday as OSCON with some big names backing the awards (e.g. Sun, OSAF and (interestingly) a major venture capital firm USVP)."

Comments

Flabbergasted!

[mao che minh]

$10,000! That's more cash than most OSS developers see in a full year! An Indian programming outfit could run off that kind of funding for years to come! Go ZDNet and Sun!

*ducks*

Re:Flabbergasted!

[OECD]

$10,000! ... An Indian programming outfit could run off that kind of funding for years to come!

That's the Grand Master award, you've gotta be RMS or someone to get that. Most of the awards are $500--you're going to have to find Bangladeshi programmers...

Holy Whackamolly! We've Got Chips!

[Anonymous Coward]

$10,000?! WOW!

But really, if one was to write such a super OSS program, wouldn't he be hired by a big corporation and paid at least ten times that amount?

Re:Holy Whackamolly! We've Got Chips!

[Hufo]

If someone win this award that's because he has great talents and certainly choosed to work on the projects he likes instead of working for a 'big corporation'. As these projects are open-source he certainly is not paid for his work. So a little cash can be very welcomed!

Re:Holy Whackamolly! We've Got Chips!

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

Well, most people in the world live on $2 per day. So thats 5 000 days or enought to survive more than 13 years.

For many people on the earth that's a large sum.

Re:Holy Whackamolly! We've Got Chips!

[anthony_dipierro]

But really, if one was to write such a super OSS program, wouldn't he be hired by a big corporation and paid at least ten times that amount?

Transmeta isn't exactly a big corporation, and considering that the Sr. VP of Worldwide Sales only makes $262K a year I'm not even sure Linus is making $100K. And that's the big guy, the supreme God of open source software. I'm sure there are lesser mortals in the OSS world making less than $100K.

Re:Holy Whackamolly! We've Got Chips!

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to put 'win' and 'welcomed' in bold as well. I supposed I shouldn't be shocked about 'choosed', given the poor treatment of 'loose' around here.

A good litmus test: are you in favor of looser women?

Re:Holy Whackamolly! We've Got Chips!

[anthony_dipierro]

Well, most people in the world live on $2 per day.

$2/day? That's not even enough to eat around here, let alone write software.

Re:Holy Whackamolly! We've Got Chips!

[scalis]

Well, most people in the world live on $2 per day. So thats 5 000 days or enought to survive more than 13 years.

Nice perspective... However, these people are not likely the ones to run to their keyboards, code something and then collect either.

Re:Holy Whackamolly! We've Got Chips!

[Anonymous Coward]

The salaries of corporate executives generally bear little resemblance how much they make in a year. Hence all the new-style "dollar-a-year men".

Re:Holy Whackamolly! We've Got Chips!

[anthony_dipierro]

Is Linus a corporate executive?

Hooray!

[Yoda2]

Pick me! Pick me! Oh, wait a second... my project isn't popular and no one contributes to it.

Re:Hooray!

[Cipster]

Well from looking at that project page I notice that it has 0 bugs!!!!
This is remarkable for an alpha project! I'm sure it will win.

Re:Hooray!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your project DOES, however, have the distinction of being a first in the world of AI. Bootstrapping vocabulary from watching videos? If I had thousands of dollars to hand out to open source projects, you would certainly be on the short list.

Re:Hooray!

[MikeFM]

I wouldn't suggest they award the money to unpopular projects (mine are mostly that way too.. well people use em but seldom contribute) but I would suggest they exclude projects that have funding. I guess I'm suggesting they not give money towards Linux, Apache, PHP, MySQL, Gnome, KDE, Mozilla, OpenOffice, Perl, Python and various other tier one projects. Better to encourage people to write apps that are needed but not as popular. Spread the wealth a little.

Re:Hooray!

[Vaughn Anderson]

Hey! You are doing great! You have ZERO bugs in your program! Amazing, how do you do it?

Re:Hooray!

[Valar]

Question? What exactly does that thing DO? hehe

Re:Hooray!

[loadquo]

There must be a whole lot of people like you... and er me
Maybe we should form a club. So we can swap tips on how not to get people interested.

Re:Hooray!

[mrmeval]

No one contributes to it cause their ain't a button to click and pay. ;-)

And I'm barely able to tell what this can do for me but I'm interested.

Re:Hooray!

[POds]

I think your right on the money. This way the youth can get involved and have an incentive to do great things.

I've been thinking of a cool project to do recently as i think it would be benifitial to so many people and there doesnt seem to be anything like it around (program and combined licence).

So this could be the incentive to pull my finger out. Also, this type of this could also attract contributer and customers to your particular Open source product!

Great Idea!!!

Re:Hooray!

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. Those are some of the most important projects. Give them their deserved awards, then the committee can move on to those other projects that also deserving. Squid, cdrecord, postgresql, postfix, and spamassassin top my personal list of deserving projects.

This could be what we need to be ready for desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

With a 10,000 USD incentive, maybe the gnome developers will actually give what their users wan't such a proper file dialog, split pane in nautilus, a non crippled file-roller and maybe they will give their users a GUI to configure advanced settings without having to go through gconf.

On the other hand, the kde guys could replace that cheezy keramik with a real style as defualt (.net and alloy are good candidates)

So then

[The Bungi]

The Razzies for this will be called "The Pre-Alpha-Aplha Awards", given out to OSS projects that never make it out of "-1, thinking about it"

Re:So then

[Cipster]

Sometimes I wish some of them stayed in that phase...

Re:So then

[Valar]

Hm, my favorite is browsing all of the MMORPGs on sourceforge. Almost without fail, those things feature like three artists, desperately seeking a "C++ Programmer with experience in MFC, DirectX and OpenGL" for a "An online RPG, similar to Everquest but in the setting of $novel by $author". And strangely, they all seem to be lacking a single release... I wonder why :)

Sun

[josh crawley]

I thought we decided that Sun was evil this week. Did I miss a memo?

Re:Sun

[n0nsensical]

Yes, it's amazon.com this week, amazon.com! Next week is Sun! Come on people, get with the program! There are thousands of Indian Slashdot readers ready to take your place!

and the winner is!!!!

[trnsfer]

again apache, i'm tired of these awards that go always to the same ppl.

Re:and the winner is!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right. Let's give the award to the Microsoft Shared Source initiative. True innovators!

Re:and the winner is!!!!

[Arandir]

How many Open Source project do *real* SQA work? How many do code reviews *before* commit? How many have comprehensive unit tests in place? How many have an accurate and correct set of design documents? Heck, how many put down more than two sentences of design before they start coding?

Re:and the winner is!!!!

[trnsfer]

i dont know, can you tell me?

Slashdot!

[Anonymous Coward]

Give $10,000 to Slashdot so we can start cloning CowboyNeal! er i mean,

CowboyNeal $10,000 to CowboyNeal so CowboyNeal can CowboyNeal CowboyNeal CowboyNeal!

j.m.

Awards....

[Madsci]

What don't they give awards for nowadays?

This post, Winner, 2003
Best Slashdot Post
Best Use of Consonants in Slashdot Post
Louis K. Albright Award for Achievement in Punctuation

.

Re:Awards....

[InterruptDescriptorT]

Louis K. Albright Award for Achievement in Punctuation

Slashdot is the last Web site I'd expect to see take this one home...

Re:Awards....

[Anonymous Coward]

Nono, this is for posts in Slashdot.

Re:Awards....

[God! Awful 2]

But you, my friend, only used one period, one question mark, and... two commas! Whereas I have exceeded that number and introduced an exclamation mark preceeded by an ellipsis (for suspense) in my first sentance, thus impacting the reader in a more substantial manner.

Haven't you heard that less is more?

-a

Sun...mmmm

[ieatfood]

Well Sun isnt as great as Microsoft but, it is just as cool.

Obviously

[Exiler]

It's because it's name is more than 3 syllables, not even including its KBuzzwErD or GNpUn!

Re:Open Sores awards? SPOILERS HERE!

[Anonymous Coward]

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL yuo verrie funnie! yuo maek mie laugth verrie much! teech mie two bee cool liek yuo!

About time

[hamtux6]

It's about time someone does this. First off, open source developers deserve money for a good product (especially if it's comparable to a commercial product that there are paid programmers working on). Second, and perhaps more importantly, this can help attract higher quality programmers with more direction that will make higher quality products, and it can perhaps weed out some projects of promise that stagnate over time.

Go OSI.

Re:About time

[eln]

Nobody deserves money for anything they produce unless they can and do sell it for money. Open source developers need to realize, and most of them do, that no one is going to pay you to create software on your own time. Sure, you can make money off of it by selling it to others, but if you're developing it for the sole purpose of giving it out for free, complete with source code, you don't deserve nor should you expect any sort of monetary gain.

It's nice that these awards are coming out, because maybe it will give someone a little more motivation to do what they were going to do anyway. But it's not going to produce more open source projects on its own, nor will it attract high quality money-motivated programmers, because if you're in it for the money, you're not going to be writing open source projects without a salary anyway.

Re:About time

[Homology]

Ah well, the parent must be a troll, but quite a few subscribe to so mercantile and narrow minded views.

Nobody deserves money for anything they produce unless they can and do sell it for money.

This view of production is quite naive. Alot of stuff is produced that is not sold, even though the producers get money for their work. An example is mathematicians that produce mathematical knowledge, and are paid for their work by grants and/or saleries. Most mathematics that are produced are certainly not gonna be "sold" in the near future, if ever.

... nor will it attract high quality money-motivated programmers, because if you're in it for the money, you're not going to be writing open source projects without a salary anyway.

Programmers that are just motivated by money are usually not high quality programmers. They tend to leave an unmaintainable buggy mess after themselves.

There are Open Source projects that have paid programmers. An example is the Norwegian company Systems In Motien (www.sim.no) that have the Open Source 3D API Coin3D (www.coin3d.org)

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a good way to drum up buzz around projects that may deserve more hands working on them or more recognition, though. THe money is almost a side-feature.

Re:About time

[KoalaBear33]

This view of production is quite naive. Alot of stuff is produced that is not sold, even though the producers get money for their work. An example is mathematicians that produce mathematical knowledge, and are paid for their work by grants and/or saleries. Most mathematics that are produced are certainly not gonna be "sold" in the near future, if ever.

What the original poster is kind of true. Under PURE capitalism, what you are saying will likely not be true. Once capitalists are done implementing their vision, your description of the events will likely be false. For example, once schools are privatized (I mean ALL schools; not one here and there), chances of people producing knowledge or work for the public good will almost become extinct. Private institutions will not produce goods for the public good. I hate to see it but I really can't see a private school paying mathematicians if they can't make money off them (of course, this will only happen when the private sector stops hiring math graduates since their skills aren't very practical--needless to say, this is already true to some extent).

KoalaBear33

Re:About time

[Homology]

Under PURE capitalism, what you are saying will likely not be true

There no such thing as pure capitalism. There are quite variations, where the current US neo-liberal type is very dominant. Communism may be concidered a form of state capitalism. Scandinavian countries have a mixture of state and private capitalism.

For example, once schools are privatized (I mean ALL schools; not one here and there), chances of people producing knowledge or work for the public good will almost become extinct

History shows otherwise, and even today there are many private institutions in USA that are financing production of knowledge for the public good; though they do get alot of public funding.

Re:About time

[KoalaBear33]

There no such thing as pure capitalism.

You are right: there isn't a place that practices pure capitalism anywhere. However, the end goal of capitalists is pure capitalism. It may take 150 years, but they are striving to get there. USA may not be be pure capitalist but it is moving in that direction by the day. Consider the fact that USA has actually privatized prisons (only a few but still). What's next? The small police forces? Many "influential" people in USA want schools to be privatized (because public schools are apparently all failing eg. Philadelphia school board??). And so on. So do you not think USA will reach that state in the future?

Communism may be concidered a form of state capitalism

I disagree. You must have a very loose definition if you consider communism to be a form of capitalism. Capitalism requires free markets! Communism has NO markets: everything is allocated. In addition, capitalism protects individual interests above communal/societal interests, whereas communism is the opposite.

As far as the Nordic countries are concerned, they practice a mixture of capitalism and socialism. Their economic system is capitalistic but their social policies are socialist, with a lot of governemnt control. So they are basically running a form of socialism on top of capitalism.

History shows otherwise, and even today there are many private institutions in USA that are financing production of knowledge for the public good;

What matters here is not whether something is private or not. Rather, whether it is non-profit or not. For example, you can run a charity that helps unemployed get jobs by utilizing some software to help them. That is a private institution but is not what I was referring to. What I was talking about is for-profit organizations, say a private school, private hospital, etc.

KoalaBear33

Re:About time

[Homology]

What's next? The small police forces? Many "influential" people in USA want schools to be privatized (because public schools are apparently all failing eg. Philadelphia school board??). And so on. So do you not think USA will reach that state in the future?

Greenspan said something to the effect that the big tax cuts is a redistribution of wealth, and would not help the economy on the short term. The strong drive in US to privatize might be seen in this light. Similar things are happening in Europe as well. How will the future be? Who knows, but politics do change over time, even the current ones.

I disagree. You must have a very loose definition if you consider communism to be a form of capitalism.

I agree that the "definition" is too loose... State capitalism i.e. extensive state ownership of property is what one found in Soviet Union, as well as markets and money. The economy and markets was heavily regulated, of course. The Marxists themselves talk about "state capitalism under worker control" as an intermediate stage to communism, and concider socialism as a "lower" form of communism.

That a state has a capitalistic system (either private or state owned) does not in itself make it either democratic or undemocratic. A communist system (for all intent and purposes today, a Soviet Union) is much more than just being state capitalistic. Luckily we are getting rid of such oppressive systems.

Capitalism requires free markets!

Capitalism does appear to require a market, but it does not have to be free. Even the term "free" is a bit problematic here : there are a lot of regulations and protectionism. Besides, free for whom?

This is great!

[fishynet]

Perhaps this will cause even more people to start codeing!

GEORGE BUSH!

[Anonymous Coward]

I chose to choosed you and spit you out!

You have surely loosed teh grammar competition!

coolio

[radiumhahn]

This could entice Microsoft employees to leak windows code! At least in my world it could. You can't have mine! Get your own unicorns! Ack! Spiders!

You smarmy sonofbitch!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but what's the $/day living cost for someone that has regular, unrestricted access to a computer ?!!!

Re:Open Sores awards? SPOILERS HERE!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why it is called flamebait, spunk covered cockgobbler.

Is it split?

[anthony_dipierro]

Open source software is generally written by much more than one person. Would the winner have to split her winnings with hundreds of others, or would the award go to whoever led the project?

Re:Is it split?

[Anonymous Coward]

No it isn't.

Re:Is it split?

[JohnGrahamCumming]

That would be up to the person who receives the award. I could imagine that on my project if I received a $500 award I would split it with the other people who make the most contribution to the project. OSI itself is unlikely to try to make that determination for a project leader. John.

Re:Is it split?

[Daniel Quinlan]

Open source software is generally written by much more than one person. Would the winner have to split her winnings with hundreds of others, or would the award go to whoever led the project?

A lot of the larger open source projects have non-profit corporations behind them, so any rewards could go there. Apache, Mozilla, Free Standards Group, GNU, SPI (Debian's corporation), and quite a few more.

I'd prefer if such a large reward could go somewhere with financial oversight rather than a founder. If it's a one-man project, though, I'd be happy to see it go into his pocket.

Daniel

Re:Is it split?

[Anonymous Coward]

That all depends. Is the award for the person or for the project?

Some people have more than one free software project underway, after all. The award might be trying to recognize their efforts in all of them rather than just one.

Re:Is it split?

[tcopeland]

> I would split it with the other people
> who make the most contribution

If PMD gets one of these, I'll use some of the money to buy a nice compiler theory book for anyone who's willing to write a better symbol table implementation.

LETS LAY OFF MORE PEOPLE

[Anonymous Coward]

By participating in stuff like this, all we are doing is getting more profits into the hands of big hardware and software integration companies, and getting more people laid off. The idea of Open Source is great for these companies because they dont have to pay for development costs, and they can make bigger profits that way. Who gets the shaft? software developers like you and me. Every body else is happy because they can get very cheap software on multiple patforms all they paid for a few core developers.

This OSS stuff has has done to software developers what MP3 has done to musicians. Eveybody is happy with the free stuff except the innovators who have to scrape by.

Dont fall into this trap, sponsered by greedy hardware companies that couldnt care less about paying for software.

Re:LETS LAY OFF MORE PEOPLE

[chaosandmadness]

You are so confused. You've just about got it exactly backwards, so perhaps I'm missing your sarcasm or something. Open Source is good for developers who are familiar with it, because companies almost always need additional features or support that aren't in the default build, and thus need developers to create these features for them and support the systems they run on. This applies also to QA and sysadmin people, as well as developers. If you think OSS ruins the job market for developers and system/software support people, you need to think some more about it and where you can fit in this new chain. For small companies that don't want to keep a fulltime dev/QA/sysadmin but still use OSS, the opportunities for consultants is excellent.

Re:LETS LAY OFF MORE PEOPLE

[Anonymous Coward]

I think its you who are so confused so much so that you dont even know you are getting screwed by OSS
Lets say there is a software project a software company "A" is working on, for instance, say a web application server. Realizing there is good money to be made in it, more companies that PAY their engineers enter into the picture

Now, a bunch of OSS guys decide to get in to this as well, write a bunch of code and gives it away for free. The companies that made money selling the software, now starts to feel the heat, they have to learn to survive. They drop the price, which in turn forces them to cut out their employees.

A bunch of companies goes out of business, and lays off their staff. OSS product, even though inferior, becomes the standard as companies cuts cost.

Harware companies that want the product gives out some money for a few core developers to continue to develop it

A bunch of people work for free to get some recognition, never getting hired by the hardware companies that support the core developers

Harware copanies add the OSS project as a key word in their literature, allowing them to sell their platforms

A few copanies that use the software will contract out a few developers that worked on the project to customize a few things they need

No new developers are needed, why pay for developers when people will work for recognition

Outside companies that use this software need only application integrators, admins, etc; they dont do development

Who saved money not paying for software?
Many compaies that otherwise would have to pay for software
Who got screwed? the developer, who spent his time developing a product

Who saved money not paying for development costs?
Harware companies that didnt have to pay for development of software. Maybe they payed for a few key developers, but thats a drop in the bucket compared to what they would have to pay if they developed software themselves
Who got screwed? the developer, who spent his time developing a product

Who benifited
An Admin or Application Integrator, hired as a contractor or full time staff that learned how to use the software he didnt even pay for
Who got screwed? the developer, who spent his time developing a product
In every case, except for the very few core developers, its the software developer that gets screwed every time. Every one else is walking away with a big smile.

OSS is good for every one, except the developer!

Re:LETS LAY OFF MORE PEOPLE

[chaosandmadness]

I still think your confused - you've made a lot of leaps of logic that don't quite work out, I think.

You say that OSS guys get into it, then companies go bankrupt when some vendors pick up the OSS version. That's not the case though - when there's a proprietary and OSS version of something, then there's options and competition - one doesn't preclude the other. IE, Apache is recognized and kicks much ass, but you don't see websphere or IIS etc going away.

You also say people work on it for free, only the core devs get paid, and the others just contribute for recognition and get nothing. Not so though, there's a very high likelihood that if the product becomes popular and used by businesses, then anyone with good familiarity with it have an excellent chance at employment working on it, adding those little features businesses need but the core project doesn't, as well as the support details.

Last I checked, putting OSS in a hardware brochure doesn't equate to more sales - rather, the quality, performance, functions of the hardware are what generate sales, not because of a bullet point that mentions OSS in the product documentation. Infact these days, that bullet point will get you sued by some asshole company claiming IP issues most likely.

As many studies have shown, while OSS has a different pricing structure, it still costs quite a bit to support/use it. Instead of blowing all that cash on prepackaged proprietary software and licenses, most of the same money gets spent on dev/admin/support of the competing OSS option. That means that instead of MS getting another 100k in their bank account, a couple of dev/admin/support people get a Job!

Companies that need specific solutions require development staff, whether it's working on a proprietary product or working to extend/specialize an OSS package that does something similar. It's more likely you can find someone who's already familiar with the OSS when you need to hire more people as well, rather than having to train someone completely from scratch to get up to speed on an internal propietary project.

AS for job satisfaction, I've been in both cases, working on proprietary software and working making OSS work for companies. Working on OSS is way better and more satisfying in my opinion, and the end pay is pretty much equivalent.

I still say OSS = more and better jobs for developers with an OSS clue. I think there's plenty of room in software for both OSS and non-OSS systems.

Re:LETS LAY OFF MORE PEOPLE

[God! Awful 2]

I don't think you're confused, but I do think you're disillusioned.

All I know is there's a million unemployed programmers out there, companies are going out of business left and right, and when I post a job req on monster.com, it gets 200 responses in the first week. Guys with 20 years experience are applying for testing jobs, and new grads don't stand a chance.

Of course, you may say that this is due to the economy in general, but it would be wrong to discount the effect of OSS. Linux may not have overtaken Windows, but it certainly devalued UNIX. Apache didn't kill IIS and websphere, but what is their market share? (Websphere has an advantage because IBM is good at FUD.) You may also want to consider that OSS contributed to both the meteoric rise and the catastrophic fall of the stock market.

-a

/. is a significant contribution to open source

[puckhead]

just sayin'

Re:/. is a significant contribution to open source

[JohnGrahamCumming]

That's a good point and there's nothing in the Open Source Awards that says that /. couldn't get an award. In fact the Special Awards (Silver) are designed for whatever purpose the electors want. So they could give an award to /. or some other entity that has helped a lot. It's really a catch all.

John.

OSI?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean the 7 layer stack is nice and all, but don't they know that TCP/IP is the standard these days?

Re:OSI?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know the quality of trolls on slashdot has really gone down lately.

Re:OSI?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, and what happened to those perverted sexual stories? I enjoyed reading some of those. Cowboy Neil must be on vacation.

Re:OSI?

[sharkey]

I mean the 7 layer stack is nice and all

And tasty, too!

Venture firm

[overshoot]

Makes a lot of sense. Venture firms in general have been hurting lately thanks to the depressing influence of the-monopoly-who-shall-not-be-named. If a little seed money can help break things open, it could pay off handsomely. Of course, having first crack at people with serious ability is probaby worth the ante all by itself.

Re:Venture firm

[JohnGrahamCumming]

That's one reason that we contacted VC firms. They are smart enough to realize that knowing the smart engineers (many of whom are working on OSS projects) is the way that they are going to make future money. John.

Re:Venture firm

[Ciderx]

I think its a tad disingenuous to blame Microsoft for the problems that Venture Capital firms are having. Its more to do with them pouring all their money into ridiculous business ideas like web sites which could never make any money and the sort. The last people that deserve any help from anyone in IT, is Venture Capital firms.

The Award Categories

[JohnGrahamCumming]

The Open Source Awards categories include:

The Grand Master Award: This award will be given to persons with an outstanding record of contributions to the open-source and Internet cultures. Ideal candidates will have a record not only of technical excellence but of community leadership and service. Along with the recognition as Grand Master, the recipient will receive $10,000 and an invitation to serve as an elector on the collegium that issues the awards.

Merit Awards: These awards will be given four times per year for work on specific open-source or network-service projects. Recipients will be recognized at the annual event and will receive a cash award of $500.

The Special Award - These awards may occasionally be conferred at the Awards Committee's discretion as a way of recognizing praiseworthy projects or conduct not covered by the existing regular categories and experimenting with new categories. Recipients will be recognized at the annual event and will receive a cash award of $1500.

MOD PALENT UP!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is 5, infolmative, it teh TLUTH!

microsoft uses linux for real

[Anonymous Coward]

ms uses linux

you're expecting too much

[SuperBanana]

I thought we decided that Sun was evil this week. Did I miss a memo?

Heh, you're expecting proper cronological order from this editorial staff? Oh, but don't worry- they'll get the order right next time they post the stories. Failing that, third time's the charm.

The Judges

[JohnGrahamCumming]

Jeremy Allison, one of the lead developers on the Samba Team, a group of programmers developing an open source Windows(tm) compatible file and print server product for UNIX systems. Allison handles the release engineering and the co-ordination of Samba development efforts worldwide and acts as a corporate liaison to companies using the Samba code commercially.

Larry Augustin, a venture partner at Azure Capital Partners where he specializes in software, systems, and related IT infrastructure technologies. He currently serves on the boards of directors of VA Software Corporation (as chairman), the Open Source Development Lab, Linux International, and the Free Standards Group. Previously he was conference chairman for LinuxWorld Conference and Expo, and served on the conference advisory board. Augustin has appeared as a regular columnist in Linux Magazine, has written numerous articles, and is the author of "Hardware Design and Simulation in VAL/VHDL," published by Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Jim Gettys, a member of HP Labs' Cambridge Research Lab, currently working on making open source systems safe on handheld computers. He helped found the handhelds.org community. In 1984, Gettys started the X Window System that forms the base technology of the Linux and UNIX desktops, on which Gnome and KDE are based. Gettys worked at W3C on loan from Compaq Computer Corporation's Industry Standards and Consortia group from 1995-1999. He is the editor of the HTTP/1.1 specification (now an IETF Draft Standard).

Dr. Marshall Kirk McKusick, author, consultant, and professor on UNIX- and BSD-related subjects. While at the University of California at Berkeley, he implemented the 4.2BSD fast file system and was the research computer scientist at the Berkeley Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG), overseeing the development and release of 4.3BSD and 4.4BSD. He has been a strong advocate for the open-source movement since its inception in the mid 1980s.

Keith Packard, developer of open source software since 1986. Packard has focused on the X Window System since 1987, designing and executing large parts of the current implementation. He is currently employed by HP as a member of the Cambridge Research Laboratory working on pervasive and mobile computing. In 1999, he received a Usenix Lifetime Achievement award for his work on the X Window System.

Eric S. Raymond, observer-participant anthropologist in the Internet hacker culture. His research has helped explain the decentralized open-source model of software development that has proven so effective in the evolution of the Internet. His own software projects include one of the Internet's most widely-used email transport programs. Raymond is the co-founder of the Open Source Awards.

Guido van Rossum, creator of Python, one of the major free scripting languages. He created Python in the early 1990s at the National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science in the Netherlands, and is still actively involved in the development of the language. van Rossum recently accepted a position at Elemental Security, a start-up founded by Dan Farmer.

Re:This could be what we need to be ready for desk

[usotsuki]

I've seen that GNOME file dialog before.

Windows 3.1. Yeah. It was teh suxor there too.

KDE though ripped off Win98...

Gotta stop cloning Big Evil, guys!!

-uso.

an obvious omission!

[SuperBanana]

What don't they give awards for nowadays?
Best Slashdot Post
Best Use of Consonants in Slashdot Post

You're forgetting the obvious award for our dear editors!

Most # of Dupes

Re:an obvious omission!

[Anonymous Coward]

...for at least two meanings of dupe %-)

SO POST YOUR OWN GODDAMN JOKES, FUCKNUT

[Anonymous Coward]

We can't do it all alone!

Re:SO POST YOUR OWN GODDAMN JOKES, FUCKNUT

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok so maybe it wasn't a troll. It's a fine line.

From the awards ceremony ...

[DogIsMyCoprocessor]

The nominees in the category of Longest Lived Project to Never Release 1.0 are -

• Enlightenment
• the HURD
• JDOM

And the winner is ... the HURD! (Cue music as RMS goes up to the stage).

</flamebait>

Re:From the awards ceremony ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Over 10 years ago I was told by someone at the FSF that Hurd 1.0 was going
to be released in December 1993. It looks like the release date slipped a little.

Re:From the awards ceremony ...

[Anonymous Coward]

They're optimizing the release to coincide with the DNF release for a one-two knockout.

Re:Furreigners

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy's date, obviously, dumped him at 3:00 PM !!!

Horrible

[puckhead]

That's one of the worst posts I've ever seen on Slashdot.

troll leveling.

[Anonymous Coward]

Elfwind the Sorcerer: How can there be trolls? I cast a spell of warding before we set out on this article!

DM Taco: The trolls appeared in a previous /. article *before* you cast the spell, so now there's trolls, okay?

Elfwind: Fine. I cast a spell. Stinking cloud!

DM Taco: Your spell has no adverse effect. In fact, the trolls seem to kind of like it.

Elfwind: Blast these foul beasts! Where is my warrior-friend Ironfist of the mountain?

Ironfist: *yawn* What's all the racket? You need somethin' boss?

Elfwind: I need a little distraction while I mix some components for a fireball spell!

Ironfist: You got it sir! Attacks the trolls

Elfwind: Mixes a few spell components

Ironfist: destroys all the trolls with ease

Ironfist: That was easy....those must've been low-level trolls.

Elfwind: Oh shit! Where did all the trolls go?

DM Taco: In your surprise, you've fumbled the components of your fireball spell, sending your entire party into the sweet embrace of death. Game over.

Entire Party: *CURSES*

The End

And the moral of the story? Always follow the recipe.

Re:troll leveling.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whats this? 1) Mash trolls 2) ???? 3) Experience That gives me a strange idea for competitive trolling. Each person in the group gets together with the GM to create a character, Physics troll, spelling Nazi etc. And the GM sends them off to troll a variety of different online forums to gain experience, with more experience you can use more tools such as auto-trolling and rude pictures. I can picture it now. GM: For getting a thrity post argument about who really invented the can-opener, you earn yourself a Vorpal Goatse picture. It is hosted on www.micorsoft.com to sucker unwary posters.

Just hold on a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to see the nominees battle it out in a Survivor-type contest before the cash is awarded.

Re:Just hold on a minute

[JohnGrahamCumming]

Just working on an OSS project is a "Survivor-type contest" because you are constantly battling for your own survival.

John.

Sun, Slashdot, Schizophrena link found.

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientists today found a link between schizophrenia and stories about Sun microsystems.

13:00 Sun contributes funds to SCO who is evil encarnate. Sun determined to be son of Satan.

16:00 Sun contributes funds to open source award foundation. Sun determined to be worthy of sainthood.

18:00 Sun steals candy from baby.

20:00 Sun rescues puppy from drain pipe.

I feel like I am in a Jim Carrey movie!

CommentTrack1

[Anonymous Coward]

Why "she"? Why assume it would be a female?

Use the singular "they".

Re:CommentTrack1

[anthony_dipierro]

I think it's kind of funny thinking of a chick winning the prize. It brings up all kinds of questions and issues, like why aren't there more chicks in open source software? Using "they" would just make me sound like a moron.

My VOTE is for the ReactOS Project

[Anonymous Coward]

They have quite a few Windows drivers and apps working now.

Re:My VOTE is for the ReactOS Project

[JohnGrahamCumming]

We are going to open up a nominations mailing list through the OSI web site that I'll be moderating and will look for nominations like this.

Thanks,
John.

$10000

[Anonymous Coward]

1: write some open source code
2: ????
3: PROFIT s

Is there a FUD award?

[gilesjuk]

Cus we all know who would win it :)

Except that ...

[staaktdenarbeid]

OSI is going to be giving Open Source Awards with cash prizes of up to $10,000. The idea is to create the "Nobel Prizes" of Open Source.

... a Nobel Prize amounts to 10M SEK (125 K$). Mind the units !

Re:Except that ...

[cperciva]

a Nobel Prize amounts to 10M SEK (125 K$). Mind the units !

Mind the decimal place, as well. 10M SEK = 1.25M USD.

Err, Samba is not free!

[SharpFang]

It's Pizzaware!
(see point 1.8 for details)

Here's what it does...

[Yoda2]

This recent workshop paper will give you some idea of what EBLA does.

Big factors keeping people from using it:
1. no GUI
2. requires a local PostgreSQL install

Both will be fixed soon by the addition of a Swing GUI and a publically available DB server.

Bet it still won't be very popular though...

Re:Here's what it does...

[CausticWindow]

Isn't PostgreSQL publically available?

Re:Here's what it does...

[Yoda2]

Sure it is, but not everyone wants to install it. I'll be making a functioning server available for use in conjunction with the EBLA software soon.

Re:Open Source: serious problem here

[KoalaBear33]

I'm not sure why copying files would take that long--especially hard drive to hard drive. I know that Linux isn't so good when it comes to accessing mounted drives like CD-ROMs and floppy (floppy support is horrible in Linux right now). But hard drive should be ok. Maybe there is something wrong with your hard drive, or something is misconfigured.

As far as stability is concerned, Linux (the operating system) is very stable. You rarely ever have to reboot if something crashes or if you change your settings. However, the desktop applications aren't so great yet. Mozilla seems to be slow and I have had some apps crash (even the excellent GIMP)

System requirements for Windows and Linux are pretty much identical (unless you are running a barebones server or some specialized box, in which case Linux is better). I have dual-boot Win98SE/Win2000 and Mandrake 9.1 on a PIII-450 with 384MB RAM and performance is similar between all of them. Linux takes longer to boot up but other than that, it is just as fast.

So far there are two main advantages of Linux: (i) stability (especially if you try running servers), (ii) free or low-cost applications. Regardless of how you look at it, Linux is far more attractive for home users and small/medium businesses. Both of these segments don't have a lot of money to spend and GNU/Linux offers them a lot of applications. For instance, buying Mandrake or Red Hat or SuSE for $100 will basically give you an OS+office suite+image editors+internet tools. On the Windows side, you would have to purchase many individual components. In Linux, if you want to create a graphic for your website, you can use GIMP. If you wnat ot upload the files, just use the free FTP GUI program--Windows doesn't have one. And so on.

The way I see it... those that are cost-conscious (basically lower-middle class and lower) will likely go with Linux in the future. While those that don't care about money, will probably stick with Windows.

KoalaBear33

Of course not

[autopr0n]

Who on earth would contribute toe something called E-BLA.

Re:Open Source? More like Openly Racist

[KoalaBear33]

Only read the first bit... completely useless post but hey, I'm unemployed and have no life :(

Alan Cox; Richard Stallman; Bruce Perens; Wichert Akkerman; Miguel DeIcaza. What do you see in this list of names? Are there any African-Americans on it? Absolutely not, none of those names sound like one a self-respecting black person would have!

How can you really guess whether a person is black based on their names? If you are talking about Africa or something, I can see what you mean. But nearly all African Americans have European names.

KoalaBear33

Thanks JohnGrahamCumming !

[autopr0n]

But the question is, where is he cumming from? Perhaps a place where people cut'n'paste multiple pages from the article into the comments to reap twice the karma!

Contribute toe?

[Yoda2]

I bet these people would be happy to contribute toe.

Re:Thanks JohnGrahamCumming !

[JohnGrahamCumming]

Like I give a shit about the karma. And your joke about my last name is *so* funny, I've never heard thast before.

I cut the press release up into pieces so that (a) you didn't read all the press release BS and (b) so that it was digestable by the Slashdot masses who rarely read articles.

John.

ideology

[Pflipp]

An award often also communicates some kind of an ideological thingy. It would be interesting to see what would happen in terms of community reactions when OSI awards an OSS project that isn't Free Software.

Re:Thanks JohnGrahamCumming !

[Anonymous Coward]

He wasn't making fun of your last name, he was pushing his porn site. Which isn't half bad, fwiw.

No, I'm not him, either.

Re:Open Source? More like Openly Racist

[Anonymous Coward]

The man has been posting comments like this on other stories, and sounds like a white guy.

Re:Open Source: serious problem here

[puckhead]

I guess it just depends what you use the system for. I build web sites at work on a W2K system and at home on a Linux system. The work box specs at three times the speed of my home system. There is no question that I'm more productive on my home system. Regarding your hd to hd file transfer problem, that's not standard. Something's broke on that machine.

USVP is a smart outfit

[winkydink]

Look at their successes here.

They know that companies can make great produucts and a lot of money using open source tools. Plus, if they get the companies they invest in to use said tools, they can use their capital on more important things, like Aeron chairs... oops wrong decade!

open-source+free software = software revolution

[KoalaBear33]

Open-source + Free Software = Software Revolution ...at least I think so :)

You know... The same thoughts entered my mind when I first encountered the whole notion of open-source and free software years ago. For the sake of simplicity, I am going to replace open-source and free software as OSFSF and am going to assume that they are identical in the context of this article (I think it is a valid position to take, especially since most open-source software is free).

I am still not sure what to make of it. I don't know if it is "good" or "bad".

I suspect that my view of the market is very different from yours. I'm a socialist and on the far left so I don't care about corporations or the state of "wealth". In addition, I have been unemployed since I graduated from school 2 years ago so I might not even find a job in this field regardless of the impact of OSFSF. However, I do care about one thing: workers. I am not a nationalist but I would like to see workers, in this case software developers, be able to make a decent living (don't ask what is decent--for now assume it is the same as your definition). I really do not want to see people lose their jobs, whether it is due to out-sourcing to foreign countries, or due to OSFSF.

the BAD

Your MP3 argument is totally irrelevant. Nevertheless, I understand your concern***. I think software developers WILL lose jobs due to OSFSF. I am pretty sure of it. For instance, if OSFSF replaces Microsoft software, Microsoft will lay off most of its workforce (I imagine at least 20,000 will be let go). It is even worse for small firms who survive by developing proprietary technology (generally protected by patents) to serve a particular industry or niche. OSFSF will likely destroy these companies, meaning more lay-offs. The bad thing here is that the people laid off will have nowhere to go since the OSFSF communities don't generally pay anyone (some are employees of corporations but they are only a few). If this was all there to it, it would be easy to say that OSFSF is bad for societies--at least from a left-wing perspective. But is there more to it?

the GOOD

There is one thing that may render the previous worker argument moot. Someone above who responded before me touched on this. Is it not possible that a new structure may be created in the software industry? After thinking about it for years, I have come to the conclustion that the software industry's structure will change. In fact, I think this is not a just a possibility but a highly likely scenario. I think the workers will be fine under my perceived scenario.

What do I think will/is happen/happening? I think there will be a software revolution due to OSFSF. It will be a MAJOR change. What I think will happen is that software developers will not work for proprietary corporations that try to maintain competitive advantage--as a matter of fact survive--by keeping their technology "secret". Instead, you will end up with a society where software developers will be hired for their skills and capabilities to work on OSFSF. THe firms that provide solutions will not benefit by keeping things secretive; instead, they survive by providing total solutions or valued added services (ie. system integration, custom programming, feature development, support, training, etc). People who are respected and get jobs will be those that CAN do the job. If you can program well, or provide support, or add features to a free/low-cost product, you will be valued. I think programmers and others in the tech industry will be fine. Those that suffer will likely be existing corporations.

I think OSFSF will have an impact similar to what science did in the 1700's (or thereabouts). The software revolution will be similar to the scientific revolution of that time period. If you recall, what the scientific revolution did was to change the structure of society. Before the scientific revolution, you had a lot of shops/stores/whate

Re:open-source+free software = software revolution

[God! Awful 2]

You, my friend, are a starry-eyed idealist. But on the other hand, I can see that you have given this more thought than the average /. reader.

The majority of OSFSF advocates claim to be capitalists (at least the ones that argue with me). They don't care whether or not OSFSF puts programmers out of work. All they care about is some libertarian ideal. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that Richard Stallman is pretty far to the left.

One thing I'm sure of is that OSFSF will drive down salaries. Sure, some programmers will still have jobs, but there will be fewer jobs. By supply and demand, salaries must fall. Additionally, OSFSF creates a lower barrier of entry for new companies, which leads to more competition, and thus lower margins. If there are lower margins, clearly salaries must fall.

This last point is crucial. When margins are high, companies don't need to export their workforce to Bangladore. As I said, not every programmer will be out of a job, but the salaries will be much lower. Right now, programmers enjoy the privilege of being paid as professionals. In the future, we could make less than a lot of unskilled labourers who just happen to have a strong union.

-a

Re:open-source+free software = software revolution

[KoalaBear33]

If there are lower margins, clearly salaries must fall...When margins are high, companies don't need to export their workforce to Bangladore.

Your view seems to be that margins dictate salaries. I strongly disagree with this. Margins have little to do with salaries. Companies may be TEMPTED to provide higher salaries if margins are high but that is not a rule. Just look at some examples.

A lot of the manufacturers in Canada (and USA too) had fairly decent margins yet they decided to move to other countries. Pharmaceuticals, who have pretty good margins, have tried driving wages down. If all they cared about was margins, they wouldn't do such a thing.

Perhaps the best examples would be from the tech industry. Let's consider a company like Microsoft (no, I'm not bashing it). Microsoft, by all accounts, is a very successful company with unbelievable margins. They have margins that are unmatched in the world (for a large company). They basically had more cash in their reserves throughout their life than what some large companies get in sales. So MS has had high margins at all times--I think we can agree on that. Yet they decide to out-source and move to other countries and hence lower wages. If it were all about margins, a company like MS wouldn't do anything yet it does.

What matters to companies and owners is simply the notion that they need to improve their margins. It doesnt' matter how much money they are getting. They always need to get bigger and better. All the examples I listed above basically point to this.

Incidentally, lowering costs results in lower prices for consumers. However, it also results in lower wages. A classic example is Wal-Mart, which has killed many retailers, yet provides very low prices to consumers. People who work in Wal-Mart get lower wages than the old retailers.

In the future, we could make less than a lot of unskilled labourers who just happen to have a strong union.

I hate to say it but I think what you are saying will become true... but it won't be due to OSFSF--at least I don't think so. It will largely be due to free trade agreements and out-sourcing to cheaper countries. I'm unemployed so I don't want to speak for the tech industry but let me just throw out one point. If you can get someone else in another part of the world to do the same job for a quarter of the cost, wouldn't that automatically drive my wage down by a 1/4th? And if you are a leftist, you already subscribe to the view that humans are equal and can do things fairly equal to one another (only thing keeping people apart are structural issues, like unstable governments, corruption, capitalist institutions (eg. IMF), etc). What all this means is that as long as there are mass currency differences, you, I and everyone else will likely lose our job or have to significantly reduce our wages. This goes for all industries!

KoalaBear33, starry-eyed idealist extradonnaire ;)

Re:open-source+free software = software revolution

[God! Awful 2]

Incidentally, lowering costs results in lower prices for consumers. However, it also results in lower wages. A classic example is Wal-Mart, which has killed many retailers, yet provides very low prices to consumers. People who work in Wal-Mart get lower wages than the old retailers.

Yes, I completely agree. That is why I think the /. argument that businesses should be thankful for OSFSF because it lowers their costs. There's a similar argument to the above for profits. Lowered costs only benefit a company if they are the only ones who can realize those savings. If everyone's costs are lowered, profits will go down.

Your view seems to be that margins dictate salaries. I strongly disagree with this. Margins have little to do with salaries. Companies may be TEMPTED to provide higher salaries if margins are high but that is not a rule.

Margins dictate salaries to a certain extent, but there is a limit. IT salaries were spiraling way out of control. Not everyone deserves to be making $150,000. But keep in mind that R&D is only a fraction of your costs. You can't export your US sales force to Malaysia. You could export your marketing department, but you probably wouldn't want to. You can export your tech support (and many do), although your customer service may suffer from having the phone answered by non-native English speakers.

Given these fixed costs, you get a tangible advantage from having your R&D co-located with marketing, sales, and support. In my job, customer service reps are constantly at my desk to discuss a customer issue. When dealing with the sales engineers in other time zones, it often takes several days of e-mail tag to get an issue resolved.

So my point is that R&D costs are only a portion of your total costs, but if they rise above a certain percentage, companies are going to start thinking about exporting the jobs. In Microsoft's case, I think they are perpetually worried that OSFSF is going to erode their margins, so they are taking preemptive measures.

If you can get someone else in another part of the world to do the same job for a quarter of the cost, wouldn't that automatically drive my wage down by a 1/4th?

I don't understand your logic here. Why down by 1/4th? Why not 3/4ths?

And if you are a leftist, you already subscribe to the view that humans are equal and can do things fairly equal to one another

I wouldn't say I was a leftist, I'd say centrist. I do believe that people in different countries are fairly equal to each other (is that a leftist idea?), but that within each country there is still wide variance in terms of intelligence, etc. (That was probably what you meant.)

I do worry that jobs are being exported to 3rd world countries and this is going to affect my salary. However, I also worry that OSFSF is going to make the problem twice as bad.

-a

Re:open-source+free software = software revolution

[KoalaBear33]

That is why I think the /. argument that businesses should be thankful for OSFSF because it lowers their costs. There's a similar argument to the above for profits. Lowered costs only benefit a company if they are the only ones who can realize those savings. If everyone's costs are lowered, profits will go down.

My feeling is that OS|FS will not have much of an impact on wages. The thing people fail to realize is that the programmers of these projects have to make a living. If the programmers are out of a job, they won't be programming OS|FS. The reason people can afford to spend time on OS|FS is because: (i) they are being paid for it (eg. Red Hat/SuSE/Mandrake employees, university researchers, etc). (ii) they love doing it, (iii) they are trying to accomplish something (eg. provide an alternative that is less restrictive and more free (in terms of freedom)). The way I see it, if most of these people didn't have jobs, they surely wouldn't be spending their time with OS|FS. Because of that, I don't think OS|FS will really kill programmers. If it did, it will self-destruct right away.

An analogy to what I'm saying is charity work (say you donating time to help educate the homeless or something). OS|FS is kind of like charity work (especially the free software side of it). Charity works well and helps a lot of people. But if the people volunteering were laid off or didn't have jobs, they wouldn't be volunteering for very long. People in USA, Canada, etc volunteer a lot with various charities--more so than in poorer countries. This is not because Americans or Canadaians are any more altruistic than anyone else. Rather, it's because these people have jobs and hence can carry out other activities. If unemployment rose significantly in these countries, you can bet that nearly all of them would stop volunteering (and rather spend the time looking for a way to make a living). In such a case, charities will self-destruct. I see the same thin with OS|FS. If OS|FS really did harm the software industry (especially the programmers) it will self-destruct. Fortunately, I don't think that will happen--although I guess you disagree.

You can't export your US sales force to Malaysia. You could export your marketing department, but you probably wouldn't want to. You can export your tech support (and many do), although your customer service may suffer from having the phone answered by non-native English speakers.

My feeling is that you can export anything, except those jobs that involve direct contact with customers (I guess face-to-face sales or something). There is no reason why you can't get good support people (should be able to find fluent English speaking people), marketing (no reason why you can't do the same thing with foreign entities...only sticking point would be things like culture), and so on. Sure, it may be tough to co-ordinate everything...but I think it will be possible at some point

I don't understand your logic here. Why down by 1/4th? Why not 3/4ths?

My bad... yeah it's supposed to be 3/4--not 1/4. Thanks for correcting me :) I wouldn't say I was a leftist, I'd say centrist. I do believe that people in different countries are fairly equal to each other (is that a leftist idea?), but that within each country there is still wide variance in terms of intelligence, etc. (That was probably what you meant.)

I can't say I speak for all leftists. However, a key underlying philosophy of the left-wing is egalitarianism. This is in contrast with the right-wing, which is based on elitism (although they always call it meritocracy). You are closer to the right-wing than the left it seems. The egalitarian view basically implies that humans are equal, both in terms of their desires, as well as their capabilities. Sure, there are people who are much better off than anyone else but these people are negligible (they probably constitute less than 1% of the population). What all this means is, IN MY OP

Re:open-source+free software = software revolution

[God! Awful 2]

I can't say I speak for all leftists. However, a key underlying philosophy of the left-wing is egalitarianism. You are closer to the right-wing than the left it seems.

I think there's a lot more to right wing vs. left wing than elitism vs. pragmatism. Your classification of people into two groups seems rather extremist. Personally, I try to stay away from most *isms. (except, perhaps, pragmatism)

The egalitarian view basically implies that humans are equal, both in terms of their desires, as well as their capabilities. Sure, there are people who are much better off than anyone else but these people are negligible (they probably constitute less than 1% of the population).

If you think that 98% of people are genetically equivalent in terms of intelligence, athleticism, etc. then you are flying in the face of biology. If you think men and women are equal in terms of their desires then you have been proven wrong many times over.

So what I am saying is that diversity within a culture certainly exists. As for differences in the average ability between cultures, that probably exists too. I would be very surprised if scientific research ever proved that black Americans are not, on average, genetically better atheletes than white Americans or that Kenyans aren't better marathon runners. There have been studies which showed that some ethnic groups may be more intelligent than others, but of course this research can't be pursued because it might result in politically incorrect conclusions.

Of course, that discussion is not really relevant to what we disagree about because I concur that the vast majority of American software jobs are replaceable by Chinese. However, I don't agree that this would automatically drop American wages by 3/4ths. For one thing, keep in mind that the jobs will be going to well-off Chinese programmers with Masters degrees. Yes, it will affect wages and maybe cut them in half, but there is some advantage to be gained from location as long as R&D isn't the dominant cost (plus you get R&D tax credits anyway).

If the programmers are out of a job, they won't be programming OS|FS. The reason people can afford to spend time on OS|FS is because: (i) they are being paid for it (eg. Red Hat/SuSE/Mandrake employees, university researchers, etc). (ii) they love doing it, (iii) they are trying to accomplish something (eg. provide an alternative that is less restrictive and more free (in terms of freedom)).

Don't underestimate the impact of university research. That's where a lot of OSS development gets done. Not just researchers, but also students with too much time on their hands. This is how wars get started: a few charismatic (by geek standards) leaders and a lot of young influential people playing small roles.

-a

Re:open-source+free software = software revolution

[KoalaBear33]

I think there's a lot more to right wing vs. left wing than elitism vs. pragmatism. Your classification of people into two groups seems rather extremist. Personally, I try to stay away from most *isms. (except, perhaps, pragmatism)

lol I'm the type that uses a lot of ISMs ;) If you are a pragmatist, I'm sort of the opposite: an idealist :) It may seem extremist but that's how things are. Since you are close to the middle, you may not be aware of the core issues that seperate people. The whole left vs right distinction is too simplistic in some sense. However, if one looks at the underlying philosophies, he/she will likely come to the conclusion I made. It is an eternal battle.

If you think that 98% of people are genetically equivalent in terms of intelligence, athleticism, etc. then you are flying in the face of biology.

I'm not saying that people are identical. When leftists talk about equality that is not what we mean. People are NOT equal. I doubt that there is even one out of the 3 billion who has 100% of the same genes as you. When we say equality, we are referring to the notion that everyone should be treated as equals. We, on the left, strive to create a society where everyone is treated as equal, given the same opportunity, penalized equally, etc. So when we say a woman is equal to a man, we are not saying that men and women are identical. Of course they are not. If anything, men look different from women, and have different features and qualities. Each have their advantages are disadvantages. For example, men are generally stronger than women, men are more athletic, etc. Conversely, women are emotionally stronger, can reproduce, etc. Yet we consider women and men to be equal. Similarly, nearly everyone on the left treat everyone as equals. This includes people who are say blind or deaf. We treat them as equals, even though they reall aren't.

Another important point is that egalitarianism also implies no classes. This is a big difference from the right-wing, who subscribe to merit-based elitist systems which result in classes.

I would be very surprised if scientific research ever proved that black Americans are not, on average, genetically better atheletes than white Americans or that Kenyans aren't better marathon runners. There have been studies which showed that some ethnic groups may be more intelligent than others, but of course this research can't be pursued because it might result in politically incorrect conclusions.

It has nothing to do with political correctness (although it depends on what you mean by this). Rather, it is to avoid racial wars. If people start doing research into this, it will give ammunition to the fascists and likely result in racial wars. We all know what happened when this sort of stuff was done 50 years ago. If the world was egalitarian and everyone was equal, it wouldn't matter. Unfortunately it's not like that. THe world is very elitist and certain traits are valued more than others

However, I don't agree that this would automatically drop American wages by 3/4ths.

It won't drop wages by 3/4ths.. it will drop wages by 100%... there won't be ANY jobs in that field...

For one thing, keep in mind that the jobs will be going to well-off Chinese programmers with Masters degrees.

Due to the nature of the world right now (ie. currency discrepancies, political clout, abuse of workers/environment/etc), the worker will be worse off. Yes, it will be a Chinese programmer with a Masters degree. But they get nowhere near what Americans get. Besides, they work longer, worker laws are weaker, and so on.

Yes, it will affect wages and maybe cut them in half, but there is some advantage to be gained from location as long as R&D isn't the dominant cost (plus you get R&D tax credits anyway).

What I was talking about is not just R&D but a lot of other jobs too (like support, marketing,

Re:open-source+free software = software revolution

[God! Awful 2]

It may seem extremist but that's how things are. Since you are close to the middle, you may not be aware of the core issues that seperate people.

I doubt that. It's not like I'm sheltered from extremist opinions. I watch CNN. :-)

We, on the left, strive to create a society where everyone is treated as equal, given the same opportunity, penalized equally, etc.

Right wingers might say the same thing, except that everyone has an equal opportunity to be a self-made man.

If anything, men look different from women, and have different features and qualities. Each have their advantages are disadvantages. For example, men are generally stronger than women, men are more athletic, etc. Conversely, women are emotionally stronger, can reproduce, etc.

Well, I do notice that you tend to equalize everything. Just as with race, you make double sure not to imply that mens' strengths outnumber womens' strengths [or vice-versa :-)].

Another important point is that egalitarianism also implies no classes. This is a big difference from the right-wing, who subscribe to merit-based elitist systems which result in classes.

I think there's a big difference between believing in classes and believing in a system that may lead to classes. Otherwise, I might ask "Why do socialists believe in economic collapse?"

It won't drop wages by 3/4ths.. it will drop wages by 100%... there won't be ANY jobs in that field...

That doesn't make sense either. What bothers me is that there are plenty of GPL apologists who say "There will always be jobs for programmers." Sure there will be, just not very many of them. The American standard of living will decline to meet that of the rest of the world.

What I was talking about is not just R&D but a lot of other jobs too (like support, marketing, etc). There IS a benefit from all this. But it accrues to the owners of the company. If you are the owner it's great--that's why they move in the first place. If you are a worker, it sucks.

My claim is that the benefit to the owner is short-term only. Reduced costs are only profitable when you have a small number of competitors.

Yeah that's true... In fact, the whole internet architecture and deployment is due to university researchers and stuff. Besides, Linux was due to Linus Torvalds' school project. Having said that, private companies are heavily involved in open-source (eg. IBM, Oracle, etc).

Many companies think that they will be the ones to tame the beast. Netscape tried, Corel tried, Caldera tried. The key to IBM and Oracle is that they haven't given away the farm. (But they are always only one bitter turf war away from doing so.)

-a

Re:open-source+free software = software revolution

[KoalaBear33]

I doubt that. It's not like I'm sheltered from extremist opinions. I watch CNN. :-)

I guess you are a conservative eh? You can tell where someone is on the econopolitcal spectrum by their opinion of media. Conservatives bash CNN; liberals bash FOX; and people left of left (ie. left to far left; like me) bash all media cuz they are elitist and controlled by a few groups.

Right wingers might say the same thing, except that everyone has an equal opportunity to be a self-made man.

Except for the fact that... the opportunity for an individual to succeed can result in greater harm to others. For instance, if I become rich, resulting in greater power, then I can hurt you by hoarding a resource (which capitalism allows, except in rare cases when the govt steps in and breaks up the company or something). This happens all the time. You need to look no further than the California energy crisis. A few companies (one of which was Enron incidentally) hoarded the resource (energy in this case) and artifically inflated prices. THe people as a whole were worse off. Can you imagine the richest state/province in the world having blackouts and brownouts? According to the right wing, this would be perfectly ok (individuals have the right to become "successful"); the left, obviously, would be totally against it.

Basically you can't get away from it: you are either egalitarian or elitist. No IFs and BUTs. The right wing is simply elitist, and leans towards the individual rather than society.

Well, I do notice that you tend to equalize everything. Just as with race, you make double sure not to imply that mens' strengths outnumber womens' strengths [or vice-versa :-)].

I try to live by the way I preach :) The worst thing one can become is a hypocrite... If you believe in something, say it and uphold it; otherwise don't!

I think there's a big difference between believing in classes and believing in a system that may lead to classes.

To me, there is little difference between believing in classes and believing in the system that will create that. You are "guilty" regardless.

Otherwise, I might ask "Why do socialists believe in economic collapse?"

Socialists do NOT believe in economic collapse (I think you have socialists and anarchists mixed up, although we are allied quite often :) ). We certainly don't want economies to collapose. That causes harm. However, we believe that capitalism is not the best system and hence would like to see it replaced. Clearly, this can only happen if capitalism collapses. Good will come out of the collapse of capitalism. To most socialists, capitalism is just as evil as monarchy was/is.

Some Marxists believe in the theory of continuous revolutions. This is basically the view that humans progress through revolutions, and these revolutions happen continuously--hence we progress continuously. I actually support that view but not in the near to medium term. I think that theory is only applicable over the long period. I don't think one can forumate a strategy or opinion based on continuous revolutions (maybe if we all lived 500 years ;) ).

To sum it up, consider the collapse of capitalism as not a desire, but rather a side-effect.

What bothers me is that there are plenty of GPL apologists who say "There will always be jobs for programmers." Sure there will be, just not very many of them. The American standard of living will decline to meet that of the rest of the world.

I just don't think the GPL will cause that much harm. It WILL impact the industry--but not so negatively. I'm going to start up a left-wing technology website and hopefully I'll get a chance to interview RMS one of these days. I'll ask him about your concerns.

I think the decline of the American standard of living will happen for other reasons. Americans just overconsume

Re:open-source+free software = software revolution

[God! Awful 2]

I guess you are a conservative eh? You can tell where someone is on the econopolitcal spectrum by their opinion of media. Conservatives bash CNN; liberals bash FOX; and people left of left (ie. left to far left; like me) bash all media cuz they are elitist and controlled by a few groups.

I already said I was centrist. I don't bash CNN for "being too liberal". I don't have the opportunity to bash Fox News since I don't get that station. My bashing of CNN is based on the fact that in order to get "balanced" opinions on an issue, they get guests from both extremes and let them yell at each other. The CBC is not immune from this either. At one point I remember they were doing a piece on viagra and they felt obligated to give equal time to a woman who was anti-viagra. She had nothing particularly insightful to say, but I imagine she was the only anti-viagra person they could find.

Except for the fact that... the opportunity for an individual to succeed can result in greater harm to others.

You're really evading the question here. "Capitalism causes harm to society" is not a refutation of "Capitalism offers anyone the opportunity to become filthy rich."

Socialists do NOT believe in economic collapse (I think you have socialists and anarchists mixed up, although we are allied quite often :) ).

You may disagree, but most people now agree socialism tends to cause economic collapse. That's why I said there was a difference between believing in X and believing in something that tends to cause X.

I'm going to start up a left-wing technology website and hopefully I'll get a chance to interview RMS one of these days. I'll ask him about your concerns.

I have heard quotes from RMS to the effect of "If kids in third world countries don't have access to cheap software, how will they ever get jobs in the future?" It didn't occur to him to explain where the jobs of the future are going to come from.

The only reason USA is even sustaining itself is because: (i) foreigners invest a lot in USA (without this, USA will have problems since it has negative trade with nearly all countries),

I don't think this can be true.

(ii) USA, like all capitalism-worshippers, is mortgaging its future for the present via debt

Does that really have a lot to do with it? They basically had the budget balanced in 1994. It's Bush that took them back into debt.

"My claim is that the benefit to the owner is short-term only. Reduced costs are only profitable when you have a small number of competitors."

Why? Why are reduced costs only profitable with small # of competitors?

Because with a small # of competitors you can form an industry cartel to keep margins high.

BTW, what's your definition of short-term? 1-3 years? 10 years?

1-3 years should be typical.

Because if what you are saying is true, companies that out-source will run into problems after the short-term? It's a good test to see if your theory is correct.

It's not the individual companies that cut costs that will suffer. It's when whole industries cut costs that the member companies will suffer. The 1-3 year lag is the time it takes for the industry to adjust.

I think you are wrong. Well, if anything, your examples are poor. Netscape and Corel were big-time losers at that time. They were getting killed and simply went into Linux.

Corel is a bandwagon jumper. They didn't just go into Linux. They also got into Java, network toasters, office suites, etc. They didn't open source their office suite, but they soon learned that Linux users weren't good customers. Netscape went open source when there was still hope. At that time, lots of people still believed that you could make money going open source. The CEO of Netscape even wrote an article listing all the possible open source business models (that was posted on /.). I remember o

Dammit we can do this...

[mrmeval]

Just put a paypal or amazon or some other payment link on your page OR your special address to get mail from the internet jungle.

For groups you'll have to figure out how to divide the money, just give me a place to send the dough.

I donate all the time, it's small sure but I do.

In the past few months I've donated about 110 dollars. I donate to ANYTHING that gives me value and that has a way for me to do so.

I like doing it.

Re:Dammit we can do this...

[bobintetley]

Not everyone does though. My project runs around 400 animal shelters across the US, UK and Australia. These people use it to run their organisations every day and would be lost without it (I get a lot of great feedback), yet how much have I earned to date through my donations page?

$50

From ONE user.

People are basically dishonest, and there's no point playing on conscience as I have found most people don't have one. My user base is famed for not having money (why I do it), but it's not like I haven't saved them lots is it?

Ah well, good job I'm not in it for the money. $50 is still a few (free) beers. As someone recently said, free software development is "more than a pizza, a lot less than a living".

Re:Dammit we can do this...

[mrmeval]

I've donated to a local animal shelter for unadoptable furries, both money and a rather moldy PC.

They have absolutely no extra money, a lot of this couples income goes into the shelter and every contribution helps a great deal.

Your niche software really is helping shelters out, otherwise they either run on pieced together software or try and get something commercial that's specific at way too much money.

So be of good cheer the money that was not spent on the software goes to a good cause.

It would do some good to set up a site that evaluated different GNU software packages and then allowed subscribers to vote on which could get money and put a link for people to donate to the recommendation but also have the ability to search for others. I wonder if slashcode could do that?

I had some trouble finding the donation link, I was looking for an icon not text.

Re:Dammit we can do this...

[bobintetley]

You've just renewed my faith in mankind.

Thank you!

YHBT

[Anonymous Coward]

Moron.
HAND.

Don't forget...

[CoolQ]

The First First Post Award, given to the earliest first post to be posted.

--Quentin

The big question

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah. As an American, I must say that the thing we most need to know is - What will Linus be wearing!

Ohh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wonder what Linus will wear!

Trust the committee to be impartial?

[szap]

Anyone noticed that the 7 person committee includes Dr. Marshall Kirk McKusick (4.2BSD fast filesystem), Eric S. Raymond (loves python), Guido van Rossum (python creator)?

Wonder how that would affect projects that rival those people's projects to get awards? Say, Hans Reiser (reiserfs), or anything related to Perl?

Re:Trust the committee to be impartial?

[JohnGrahamCumming]

It's worth knowing that the people on the committee are the group that responded fast enough to invitations to join. The full list of people was long and you can expect to see the committee grow.

Nominations for the awards are going to be from the public and come through me via the OSI web site. I don't have any specific tie to an OSS project (other than my own... POPFile) nor do I favor strongly any OS or language.

The idea behind the committee was to have people who've been around a long time in OSS. The more people like that the merrier.

John.

Re:Whatever you do

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure that that story isn't actually true.

LinuxFund

[MikeFM]

LinuxFund to some extend gives money to potential projects but I find their voting process very poor. Not because it's bad but because few people, not themselves trying to get money, bother voting. The end result is that people that get their friends to go vote on their project get votes and nobody else does. If you really want to help lesser projects I suggest you vote at linuxfund.org and maybe get the LinuxFund credit card.

Prize Money

[Anonymous Coward]

Every year the ACM presents the Alan M. Turing award to some computer scientist(s). In the year 2003, Rivest, Shamir and Adleman won it (with an excellent lecture by Adleman during this year's 2003 FCRC conference). In 2003, Intel Corp. made a generous endowment allowing the prize money to be $100,000.

In 2002, the prize money was $25,000. Prior to that it was $10,000. In the late nineties it was $5000. In fact, it was $5000 for most of the time since the award was instituted.

Given that, a start of $10,000 is pretty darn generous.

ActiveState Awards

[aint]

There's a similar Open Source award (although no fat sacks of cash included). Just a few days ago the ActiveState Active Awards were handed out at OSCON. These awards are given to those actively contributing in the Open Source world.

Re:ActiveState Awards

[JohnGrahamCumming]

As ActiveState is a sponsor of the Open Source Awards their Active Awards will disappear and ActiveState will be giving the money towards an Open Source Award for a programming language.

John.

Vulture Capitalist�s

[incongruity2003]

Vulture Capitalist's are not known for ethics. But then it is no surprise that esr's OSI follows his questionable situational ethics.

It is an interesting coincidence that the story "Sun expands Unix deal with SCO" appeared on slashdot yesterday and Sun is a sponsor of the OSI award.

CNET Reported:
A previously secret licensee of SCO Group's Unix intellectual property has revealed its identity: Unix leader Sun Microsystems.

Sun hasn't been ashamed to try to profit from the effects of that suit. It jumped at the chance to declare itself a safe haven for spooked technology buyers: "Sun's complete line of Solaris and Linux products...are covered by Sun's portfolio of Unix licensing agreements. Solaris and Sun Linux represent safe choices for those companies that develop and deploy services based on Unix systems," Sun declared the day SCO filed suit against IBM.

"Now we know why Sun was so absolutely confident about where they stand in this whole thing that they were essentially able to turn it into some marketing and sales FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) of their own," Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff said.

So it appears that OSI has been arguing that The SCO Group's Intellectual Property is worthless and taking money from Sun who is using it for PR. On one hand Sun is trying to ingratiate itself with the Linux community by funding an award and the other hand the PR is FUD against both Linux and IBM's AIX. Esr did get some press about the award, but then he has always been good at self-promotion, and not word one about the glaring conflicts of interest.

Thus I hereby nominate esr's OSI and Sun for the OSCON blue ribbon for:
1. Questionable Situational Ethics
2. Self Destructive FUD
3. Conflict of Interest

The idea is to create the "Nobel Prizes" of OS

[incongruity2003]

Truly arrogant of esr and his followers at OSI - why didn't they just call it the ESR awards - after all he is going to be taking credit for the award winners work anyway.

Nobel made his fortune on dynamite. Esr is a dot com has been in terms of his fortune, but he does have a chance at making some small fortune by selling his silicon snake oil.

What I find particularly amusing about this is that Linus or RMS could win a Nobel Prize and esr might be a footnote in the history books as one who attempts to rewrite history and take credit for the work of others.

You forgot about mplayer.

[Anonymous Coward]

The developers have a mortal fear of releasing 1.0, apparently afraid of being deluged with people bitching about mplayer's constant segfaults. They seem to be moving, asymptotically, towards 1.0, as LaTeX does towards pi.

Re:You forgot about mplayer.

[maw]

Actually it's TeX which is slowly moving towards pi; LaTeX is moving towards e.

morons adding insult to injurIE

[Anonymous Coward]

that's astounding. a roomfull of phonIE stock markup billyonerrors, & they waNT to 'give' "up to" 10k for sum of yOUR saycrud kode. we're frenetic with the degree of their corepirate nazi sucksass.

we've (that's just us) contributed multiples of that amount in goods/services/time/resources without so much as a thank you from the 'community', let alone, some storIE on cnn. yikes. fauxking FraUDs they are. tell 'em robbIE.

consult with/trust yOUR creator. vote with yOUR wallet. that's the spirit.

the daze of the phonIE payper liesense corepirate nazis is WANing into coolapps. lookout bullow.

Re:Open Sores awards? SPOILERS HERE!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you gobble the cock properly, you don't get covered with spunk.

Just thought I'd let you know.

This week, you're it

[fm6]

No, this week we're bashing smart-ass clowns who've got nothing better to do than make fun of other slashdotters.

Re:Open Source: serious problem here

[p00ya]

(Am I feeding a troll here? *shrugs*)

Firstly your copying problem:
Check that your hdd has all the necessary DMA etc. flags on for performance. Use hdparm if necessary. What filesystems are you using? How full is the disk? I know that windows will start choking with fragmentation on FAT32 and NTFS volumes with anything less than 500MB free (with or without a pagefile).
Yes, these are problems that are usually transparent in Windows, but if you're going to run linux (for whatever perceived benefit this may give) then you have to be prepared to invest some time in keeping it running smoothly.

> why anyone would choose to use an Open Source over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

I use linux mainly for development: XEmacs, gcc, gdb. Of course I browse (mozilla), play some music (xmms), and chat a little (irssi) while I'm at it. Ocassionally I might need to do some word processing (Abiword). Performance is fine for me.
So:

• There's no impeding performance difference for what I use it for.
• Downloading and burning a copy of Debian is most definitely cheaper (financially) than buying a copy of XP Pro
• I haven't had the kernel crash while I'm working, which is more than I can say for kernel stops in XP.

Even when I'm in Windows I usually have a number of rxvt consoles open, running under Cygwin (yes, open source).

So, to answer your challenge, if some how I could find a faster, cheaper, more stable system that wasn't open source then I guess I'd be compelled to consider it, but right now none really come to mind - although, I am seduced by OS X ;)