Open Source Awards 2004

An anonymous reader writes "The first Open Source Awards 2004 have been announced. These newly created awards aspire to be the Nobel Prizes of the open source world. Congratulations to the developers of Valgrind, VideoLAN, JACK, and Pango."

Comments

valgrind

[badcherry]

I don't know how, but I've never heard of or used valgrind before. I am using it right now and OMG, this is so much easier than hunting for memeory bugs! My life just got easier. Thanks valgrind!

Re:What a boring lineup...

[Espectr0]

Do you watch DVD's with any program in linux?
Then you use videolan technology, as they are the ones who developed libdvdcss.

Do you use any gnome program that can work in any language? Probable you use pango too.

Do you use mozilla or similar? Then you should now it is debugged with Valgrind

Re:So, we're awarding wasted duplication of effort

[Sam H]

Now we're stuck with two debuggers (Valgrind and gdb) each having stunted functionality. Why didn't the people in charge of Valgrind put their effort into improving gdb (and taking advantage of the already present infrastructure at no added cost)?

Simply because the "present infrastructure" did not allow to easily implement an x86 virtual machine into gdb. But valgrind and gdb work perfectly together, see for instance the --gdb-attach flag in valgrind.

Re:Valgrind: an amazing tool

[Jorrit]

Well the links on this article explain what it does (i.e. the interview with the author of valgrind). I can explain it quickly though. Basically it emulates the x86 cpu and runs your program under very close inspection. By doing that it can discover various bugs or suspicious things while your program is running. It can find out that your program is reading or writing to memory where it shouldn't read or write. It can find out when your program is trying to use variables that haven't been initialized yet (haven't got a value yet). It can find out about memory that isn't released properly. And a lot more. It also has a cpu cache analyzer tool.

In short, valgrind manages to find many bugs in programs and gives you the information so you can actually solve those bugs.

Greetings,

Re:The Grandmasters and Specials yet to be announc

[RML]

Only one of those names gives me any semblance of a clue of what it might do.

Valgrind, okay, I'll give you that one. The name is from Nordic mythology, as explained in an interview with Julian Seward. It actually makes a bit of sense if you know what it means.

VideoLAN is obvious.

JACK is used to connect audio programs together. The name makes sense to me.

Pango, well, I got the name immediately, and I think it's a perfect description. But I admit that many people won't understand a combination of Greek and Japanese roots meaning "all languages".

they're called HYPERLINKS

[Anonymous Coward]

It took me all of 2 minutes with Google trying to find links for all the software you mentioned - and greatly enriches your post.

Other than that, thanks for the pointers.

====

ImageMagick

K3b - DVD/CD burner software

Plone - The most mature open source CMS.

Mamboserver - Not as mature or featurefull as Plone, but very nice as well.

OfflineIMAP - Simple, reliable, powerful

Kstars - and KDE Technology in general

The ones that are almost there but could use a hand to make them more intuitive:

GNUCash - Can't wait for their Gtk2 version.
Mr. Project
KOffice - has a great technological underpinning.

Re:So, we're awarding wasted duplication of effort

[RML]

What I don't get is whether or not the GPL allow you to take software, add a few function calls Call_From_Closed_Source_Library();, link against said closed library, and redistribute for $$ w/o distributing source for your closed library...?

No, you can't.

Re:The Grandmasters and Specials yet to be announc

[JoeBuck]

JACK = JACK Audio Connection Kit. It's a recursive acronym, like GNU (GNU's Not Unix).