Call For Open Source Awards 2008 Nominations

chromatic writes "Google and O'Reilly have published the Call For Open Source Awards 2008 Nominations. These awards, given at OSCON 2008, recognize individual contributors who have demonstrated exceptional leadership, creativity, and collaboration in the development of open source software. The nomination process is open to the entire open source community, and nominations close on May 15. Here's your chance to sing the praises of previously unsung hackers."

Comments

Balmer and Gates

[MosesJones]

I nominate Steve Balmer and Bill Gates, in the last month they have done more to promote the concept of alternative operating systems than anyone else in the market. Bill by saying the next Windows is out next year and Steve by saying that Vista is a work in progress. Without the sterling work of these two men in hampering Microsoft it would be much harder for Open Source software in the corporate world.

Nominations

[Enderandrew]

Best Kernel Hacker - Andrew Morton (-mm kernel line)
Best Project Leader - Aaron Sergio (KDE 4)

Re:I nominate Steve Ballmer

[Toreo asesino]

and yet, what I find intriguing is OSS has capitalised on this "failure" exactly 0% with regards to desktop coverage; or no noticeable difference anyhow.

Apple may have gotten more popular because of Vista, but I've not seen any figures to suggest OSS is making any dents in the Windows market.

Re:Mark Shuttleworth

[Enderandrew]

I'm all about Gentoo myself, but my wife decided to give Linux a go so we tried several distros. We tried Kubuntu on her laptop with 7.10 I believe.

Out of the box there were no codecs and all that, which I wasn't shocked by, but I was routinely assaulted on the forums and chat room for even asking about them. How dare you install non-free software! Convert your 20 gig library of mp3's to ogg!

She had an ATI Card in her laptop, and I wanted to show her compiz. There isn't a free driver that provides 3D acceleration for her card. The instructions I found via Google said to use a restricted modules manager that didn't exist. I found later you can install it seperately, but that module doesn't ship with the distro. Again, I was routinely assaulted for even asking how to install the ATI driver. The traditional install methods work on every other distro, but fail on *buntu. I got it working after pulling out much hair.

Next, several software programs that shipped by default with the distro were just broken. Kicker and Konqui crashed all the time. I submitted bug reports and was informed I either didn't know how to use the apps (clearly, I don't know how to use kicker, though I have zero issues with in on Gentoo) or that my problem was using a x86_64 build which weren't "officially" supported, despite the fact that they are official releases, and you can get LTS support for x86_64 releases. I wonder what Mark would say about his mods saying x86_64 isn't official.

To boot, we never got wireless working on her laptop, not once. I wanted to install madwifi, and try a different kernel. I downloaded the mm source, but there were no build tools. I was searching for the right packages, and again was assualted for asking. "You should never attempt to compile anything! That is only for devs! Never touch the kernel! What are you thinking!" There was no nice meta-package I found that pulled in a complete toolchain. But I got all the packages I needed eventually. But when I booted my -mm kernel, it wouldn't load synaptics, ati driver, etc. because I lacked a restricted modules package specific for my kernel uname. I googled and asked repeatedly, and no one would help with how to produce this package myself.

I installed Suse, and wireless worked out of the box. I tried a few distros, and my wife eventually settled on Sabayon, where everything worked out of the box.

However, not only did Kubuntu have horrible packages that were broken, it had by far the worse default KDE desktop I saw. It also lacked the standard features that Mark was currently pimping for the Ubuntu release, because they are quite slow trying to work those features in Kubuntu.

Fedora, Suse and all the other big boys have custom theming for both their Gnome and KDE desktops. Suse has been providing some great patches, backporting stuff from KDE 4.1 trunk, etc.

Ubuntu says, this is what you're getting. Don't think about installing anything non-free, don't mess with packages, don't touch the kernel, live with the default, and like it!

I actually had a mod suggest to me that I should divorce my wife because she bought a laptop that wasn't 100% supported by free drivers. That's a great community.

However, if you'd like I can really go into some lengthy rants about 1,000 things wrong with Ubuntu.

Re:Mark Shuttleworth

[RiotingPacifist]

While i agree ubuntu dont do much for kubuntu, kubuntu isnt that bad.
Apart from trying kde4 when it was experimental ive never come across a broken package
Installing mp3 support was simply sudo apt-get install kubuntu-restricted-something, which google answered didnt even have to ask.
Restricted-manager-kde also solved all my wifi/ati problems without a problem. I then went on to google and install the latest ATI drivers without any problems

The comunity are usually quite helpful, ofc there's always somebody thats trying to help/stupid and gives bad advice, but aslong as you
1) Dont arrive complaining about ubuntu, instead ask how to fix the problem
2) Dont claim 300 years of windows/mac/gentoo experience
3) Google for really obvious stuff
they will normally help a fair amount.

Sure some people get easily annoyed and will just refuse to give you actual help but generally the response your talking about is unseen.

On the otherhand ive been thinking of switching to gentoo for a while, but on my old PC the install took so long that i could have installed ubuntu 2/3 times, each distro has pros and cons, just because Kubuntu wasnt for you dosnt mean it sucks.

On the otherhand complaining that both gentoo and ubuntu dont contribute as much as Redhat/novell is a valid point

Not reading your messages?

[symbolset]

and yet, what I find intriguing is OSS has capitalised on this "failure" exactly 0% with regards to desktop coverage; or no noticeable difference anyhow.

If you have read your messages I know you've seen these figures:

Windows sinks 24%

The world's biggest software maker said sales of Windows for PCs sank 24 percent and revenue from its online advertising unit came in at the low end of its projections. Microsoft's report contrasted with positive comments from chipmaker Intel Corp. and computer company International Business Machines Corp.

PC Shipments up 12%

Overall, PC shipments in the first quarter increased 12.3% compared with the first quarter of 2007, according to Gartner, despite fears that souring economic conditions might pinch PC sales.

This gap is about 1/3 of the market. Apple's computer sales are up 50%, but as you note their numbers are well counted and can't account for a gap this large. Those computers shipped with some OS on them. What was it?

eWeek, which I've always regarded as a loyal Microsoft fan, has declared Ubuntu ready to take on Windows. I think you'll find that's where the missing numbers are, though Redhat is doing well too as is Asus with their eee and myriad others.

Now you can't deny you've seen the figures.