Unsung Heroes of Open Source Software?

Yaztromo asks: "Sometimes, as an Open Source Software developer, I wonder if anyone out there is actually noticing the contributions I make to the software they're running. This got me thinking today -- how many Open Source Software packages am I running without knowing or applauding those who toiled in the background to developed them? We all know about personalities like Richard M. Stallman and Linus Torvalds, but there are a lot of unsung heroes of Open Source out there whose names may not be on the tips of everyones tongues. But perhaps they should be. They may be wizard coders, or amazing project administrators, or they provide fantastic support. Maybe they do all three, and more. Or maybe they're the person in your organization who pushed an Open Source solution in the face of an entrenched closed-source solution, and won. Or the one who printed up a whole spindle of Knoppix CD's and handed them out at a user group meeting. So here's you chance: who is your favorite unsung hero of Open Source Software, and why?"

Comments

Sometimes it's the evangelists.

[abiggerhammer]

I don't think he does much open-source development himself, but the person who introduced me to OSS was a guy named Randall Severy, whom I met through the Artemis Society. His company actually develops proprietary content-management systems, but when I was in the Arctic and needed to do an Internet audio broadcast, he helped me come up with a free, open-source way to do it after our field sysadmin said "no way."

That incident has always symbolised the entire Open Source movement to me -- distributed thinking and determination coming up with a powerful solution, despite all the naysayers' opinions.

In the KDE world...

[sultanoslack]

We basically have no heros in the sense of this article. Despite being one of the largest (quite possibly the largest) and most visible OSS comunities it's become something of a distinctive property of our community that we don't have someone that's out there making a lot of noise.

I'm not sure what really defines a hero; in fact most of our "heros" in the F/OSS community probably aren't those who have contributed the most. More often they're just the guys that are stark-raving-mad and don't want anyone to miss the circus.

Sourceforge

[mmmmmhotpants]

Sourceforge bridged the gap between open source projects and the general public.

It gave coders the resources they needed to get multi-coder open-source projects to the public.

It gave the public the resources they needed to find the solutions they need and interact with the coders.

I wish they'd had this sooner.

[techno-vampire]

My nominee is the late Daniel J. Alderson, of JPL. Everything he wrote was Open Source, because that's the way JPL works. Until fairly recently, they were still using the system he wrote to maneuver spaceprobes, although it waasn't his program that caused the crash on Mars. His software navigated Project Voyager out of the Solar System and into intersteller space. It maneuvered Voyager I behind Titan, giving us the first measurment of its atmosphere.

When he lost his sight to diabetes, I acted as his caregiver and "seeing eye person." I helped him write software tools and subroutines for general use in Project Voyager. I watched him move bytes around absolute memory addresses in FORTRAN 77, although the language was supposed to prevent this. He was, as Jerry Pournelle once wrote, "the sane genius." He died in 1988, but he's still one of the greats in my book and in that of everybody who knew him.

Re:Donald Becker

[Jon Proesel]

I went to high school with Don, and I can say that not only is he an outstanding programmer, but he's an outstanding friend as well. He's the most caring, trustworthy guy you'd ever want to meet.

Not really answering your question , but ..

[bluFox]

There is an ancient hindu tradition of creating anonymous works.
The authors (or the maintainors) never left their names in the body of literature or text. We can only guess at the people who created those ancient texts from other sources. The reasoning for doing that [i guess] was that, the work if it can, will survive because of its own ability and the fame for that work is same as fame for its author.
It is perhaps the same thing that prompts us to contribute to the OSS - so that we can feel that at least a part of our selves survive through them.

Re:A True Open Source Hero is...

[Lumpy]

Would you like the Ironic part??

Bill Gates encouraged MANY MANY people to flock to open source from almost day one. His "Basic" for the altair, even before he released his very first commercial program, his attitude towards users and others was so awful that many people hated him from day one. He sent a foaming at the mouth rant as an open Letter to all

I remember sending him a letter at the ripe old age of 10 asking about when BASIC was going to be released so I could play with it on my dad's computer at work.

I was Flamed hard in a rude reply about how software Thieves were delaying it and as a child it was beyond my capabilities anyways... I wish I still had the letter and I remember how it solidified in me a dis-taste for commercial software. I was writing assembly for my Commodore KIM-1 single board computer at that time and was excited with the idea of being able to easily program a real powerhouse computer.

Bill gates has been driving people to Open source ever cince he started in the business.

Brian Fox, author of the Bash shell

[hqm]

Without the bash shell, Linus wouldn't have had anything to boot up to :-)

Brian Fox was the original author.

Re:Gene Spafford

[LearnToSpell]

He's got some of my favourite quotations of all time, too.

Gene Spafford, another computer security expert, likened hacker break-ins to "being pecked to death by ducks."

More at http://www.cerias.purdue.edu/homes/tripunit/spaf-a nalogies.html

Re:Red Demon

[Drakonian]

Did you know that the mascot was designed and drawn by John Lasseter of Pixar fame?

At least that's what my BSD book says. Correct me if I'm wrong.