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The Most Influential People In Open Source
mmaney writes "As part of its 2009 open source best practices research, MindTouch asked C and VP level open source executives who they thought are the most influential people in the industry today. The list is ranked by the effect these individuals have had on the open source industry. Over 50 votes from executives in Europe and North America were cast. There were a few surprises from outside of the open source industry. Steve Ballmer got a mention because of his negative remarks on the open source industry and its subsequent positive impact. Vivek Kundra was mentioned because of his contributions to the industry inside the US Federal Government. Notably absent, however, are any influential women."
Relatedly, Matt Asay (who is also on the list) writes about the decreased need for open-source evangelism, noting that several people on the list are there "not because they're open-source cheerleaders, but because they have helped vendors and customers alike understand how to get the most from open-source investments."
Someone who makes us want to look for alternatives?
How can these people be "influential" when nobody's ever heard of them?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Although the article was very thin on details, I thought that it was worthwhile. It put a new spin on things because the list dealt with who was currently influential, rather than trotting out the old names that we've seen on lists like this for the last fifteen years. I realized after reading the article that I just don't care that much, though. Good thing they chose corporate types to put together this list, since they'll get a charge out of reading it.
So, no votes from anyone who's actually, you know, writing any open source code?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Relatedly, Matt Asay (who is also on the list) writes about the decreased need for open-source evangelism
If anything, raving fanbois screaming that Microsoft is "teh suck" is doing more to hurt open source than help.
I'm a vegetarian. I don't preach to people about it. I don't need other people to follow my path to make me feel good about what I do but I always welcome those who are interested. I find that screaming at people for eating meat is annoying and counter productive. Instead I'd have much more success coming off as a rational being and helping people who want to be vegetarians become vegetarians. Thrusting my ideals on someone who is happy where they are at is only going to make them more at odds with me and my ideals.
They only way you're going to get someone who is happy with Windows or OSX to go Linux is to get apps that are Linux only that they just can't live without. That isn't happening today. These apps don't exist.
I want to note there are a few who actually contribute code listed. BUT it's important to understand that this top influencers list was actually a byproduct of a survey conducted establishing best practices in open source sales and marketing. Hence the distinctly business slant. This list of top influences has been so remarkably well received that we intend to do it every year. However, in the future survey we will include CTOs and VP of Engs in order to create two categories. Business/Law and engineering. Thanks for the feedback. Please post additional suggestions to the post and we'll try out best to incorporate them.
I'd say he's still fairly influential in the open source community.
I'm very impressed with this list. It's about time the venerable Mr. Error Establishing a Database Connection got his due.
I'd like to think that the end users are the most influential people in open source projects.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Here is one: Leslie Hawthorn. She organizes Google's Summer Of Code, which has brought thousands of students (myself included) in an active role of participating in various open source projects. It's an absurdly hard task to coordinate thousands of students and mentors each year, to make sure all information, payments, shirts, ... are sent out in time, to organize the mentor summit, and meanwhile try to solve all problems that come up underway. She does it extremely well and I think the open source community can't thank her enough. I honestly don't think there's much more you could do to influence open source.
Go Leslie!
One CS student VS 893 DOS games: Let's play oldies
Well, thanks, but I don't see how my experience with NeXTSTEP and the Mac make me any kind of hero, let alone an "open source hero". I've given a little bit of code away in my time, but it's not like it's any kind of mission I'm on.
As for GnuStep, it's a nice try, but once Apple and NeXT merged and the danger of NeXTSTEP vanishing altogether was alleviated, that really took the wind out of GnuStep's sails. The Linux crowd doesn't care about it, and the Mac crowd doesn't need it.
they should be focusing on replicating the NeXT/Apple experience.
I have to disagree with you on that. Trying to match any existing system is shooting too low. I remember when Visix was very proud of bringing "the Mac level of UI to UNIX" back around 1987 or so. I interviewed with them, and told them that unless they were looking to substantially exceed what the Mac offered, they shouldn't bother.
What I'd love to see happen with the Linux desktop is some serious re-thinkng of how a UI should be done. Trying to make it like Windows is tragic, and trying to make it like the Mac is just never going to be good enough.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Nothing wrong with being white, male, or rich. The problem with the list is that it claims to be the top "influencers", and I really can't picture anyone asking themselves "gee, what would those guys think?" when deciding how to proceed with any open-source project.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I'm not sure if you still can find it, but I contributed some code to the MiscKit, which was a collection of code for NeXTSTEP developers. If you're developing code on the Mac, you might have some use for the sample code I did when I was at Apple, which I described here.
More recently, I posted a couple of little iPhone hacks here and here.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I think that "Open Source" means something different to me..maybe I'm getting older... Does the whole idea of "Open Source" has been kidnaped by the corporate *bs* and rebranded with a new background, meaning and of course, new corporate "heroes"?
>> What I'd love to see happen with the Linux desktop is some serious re-thinkng of how a UI should be done.
Why? The UI is more or less a solved problem, sort of like the controls of a car. Yes there are some minor innovations here and there. Someone adds some taskbar effects or a nicer way of moving through open windows, or someone adds a steering wheel control for the radio. These little tweaks will go on for a long time, but the basic idea of a desktop is a solved problem, and doesn't need re-inventing. Just like the car, where our standard design is almost perfect for most people, and all of the radical attempts at revamping it have failed because they offer no significant advantage.
The desktop UI isn't going anywhere until we move away from our current interfaces. The next major step will happen when we're no longer tied to a keyboard/mouse combo. Until then why whinge about the state of the UI? It fits the application just fine.
...Darl McBride? I think he is someone who had an effect on the open source industry.
lucm, indeed.
The UI is more or less a solved problem, sort of like the controls of a car.
If you believe that, then by all means, enjoy what you can buy today. Heck, I know people who still live in EMACS.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
This is industry marketing dribble where they think "Open Source" is a fashionable marketing slogan.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
"What I'd love to see happen with the Linux desktop is some serious re-thinkng of how a UI should be done."
Hear Hear! Yes, I too am a little disappointed that the "zenith" of Free Software seems to be cloning the look and feel of Windows, which is cloning the Mac, etc.
What about some real ground-breaking stuff - how about a marriage of GUI and Unix-y pipe goodness, where you could connect applications together in a GUI and have them do data flow type work - take the Unix filters approach one (or more) steps further?
What about getting RID of the file selector, and just using the normal file views + drag and drop to open and save files? Drag a file to your word processor, and it opens. Drag the tab from the word processor to a disk, and you save. Drag a section of a file, and you save that section. Drag that section to the desktop, and you save a cut buffer, and you can have as many cut buffers as you want.
Hell, why can't I just drag a file to a printer icon to print it? Why do I have to OPEN the file, then print it?
Let's look at the old OS/2 Workplace shell - let's make every file an object, with methods, selectable via drag or via right click.
Rather than using 3D just to view 2D windows in a glitzy way, let's try to do something meaningful with it.
Yes, some of the above ideas may not work out, but let's at least start exploring them and finding out WHICH ones don't work and which ones do?
Let's not let the "But people are used to the way Windows does things, and thus we cannot change anything away from that paradigm" ball-and-chain keep us from moving forward.
Why can't we tie man pages/info pages and other help into one source, so that we can have the advantages of both being able to search a global help database (apropos printing), being able to view the man pages for a program without running it (man lpr), AND still having those pages be context-linked into the programs?
www.eFax.com are spammers
(..) but unfortunately the Open Source community of programmers has been replaced by a conglomeration of companies who are exploiting Open Source as a tool to further sales.
And any true FOSS supporter should welcome that: whatever the motive of folks employing open source, as long as they do, they further general adoption of it.
Commercial exploitation of FOSS means incorporation into products, means equipment that adheres to standards (vs. closed protocols). It also means software reuse, less re-inventing of the wheel, and (ultimately) cheaper products because the manufacturer didn't waste money re-inventing those wheels. And products that are more valuable to end-users because of their open, commodity, standards-compliant properties. And if we're lucky, perhaps some promotion of the "share me" vs. the "it's mine!" philosophy, if end-users see that FOSS is being used.
That is all fine with me, even if the original motivation was cold, hard greed.
What's with the astrotufing, man?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
I either haven't heard of these people, or I don't care about them. Also, nearly everyone listed is either a CEO or board member of a corporation.
First, the hall of fame:-
"And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates."
-- Deuteronomy, 6:6
And now, the hall of shame:-
Top 4 are not open source. They only run commercial companies that have sidekick OSS products. Their main products are commercial ones. Those people are not OSS developers. You might ask them questions about open source only if you want business related answers about open source and even then you might not get any viable business answer.
Honorable Mentions - Scott Mcnealy, Sun Microsystems. WTF?
Take a quick look at the people in the article:
http://www.mindtouch.com/blog/2009/10/27/most-influential-people-in-open-source/
Now take a quick look at the people on their board (scroll to bottom).
http://www.mindtouch.com/About_MindTouch
Notice any two names and pictures in common, like say the top two ranked people in the article?
Now, I guess you could think "Wow! these guys must really be a great company since they have the TOP TWO OSS influencers on their board!". A less naive person might have some other thoughts on that.
This article is little more than marketing masquerading as news. It was written by the companies sales guy. The reason why nobody has ever heard of these people is that the article isn't about actual people of influence, it's an attempt to sell a product.
AccountKiller
Get your tin foil hats out.
If you look at the boards of the top 25 open source boards you'll find many of these people on the list present. I'd say this is likely a significant factor in establishing these folks as the 2009 Most Influential Open Source Executives? Wouldn't you?
If the mouse was never invented, EMACS (and vi) would still be one of the best interfaces. But the mouse was invented and things changed. I believe the grant parent had already covered this, by saying unless we are to drop the keyboard/mouse, dont expect a UI revamp.
I'd say this is likely a significant factor in establishing these folks as the 2009 Most Influential Open Source Executives?
Maybe. But your article wasn't titled Most Influential Open Source Executives. It was Most Influential People. Or are you saying that only executives are people?
AccountKiller
..and the point of open source is a number of people offering their source code to everyone. These people are the source of "open source", and the names on that list don't resonate with that crowd, hence they are not influential. The list should include notable (and leading) contributors to such project as Firefox, Linux, Net/Open/FreeBSD, OpenOffice, SAMBA, Wine, OpenSolaris, etc. (I am sure I missed a lot of important OS projects, please do forgive me in advance).
It's just another case of epitomizing the managers over the engineers - yes, it's a cliche, but it fits. Managers just can't seem to be satisfied with raking in the most dough - they need the kick of fame, too, even though in the OS world they are the least relevant - remember, cathedral vs. bazaar.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
If the mouse was never invented, EMACS (and vi) would still be one of the best interfaces. But the mouse was invented and things changed.
I use a mouse and lots of graphical applications, but I also use emacs in a text terminal. There must be something wrong with me, since I like using different tools for different jobs.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
As for GnuStep, it's a nice try, but once Apple and NeXT merged and the danger of NeXTSTEP vanishing altogether was alleviated, that really took the wind out of GnuStep's sails
I have to disagree with you there. Some of the most active GNUstep developers (both in terms of core development and building on top of GNUstep) joined the project since 2004, after getting their first experience with Cocoa. GNUstep stalled early on due to the the decision by the FSF to pay the makers of Ghostscript to implement a Display PostScript server. They failed, and development of GNUstep's AppKit was held up while waiting for it to finish, then when it was clear that it never would, development had to go backwards for a while. During this time, GNUstep only attracted developers who were experienced with NeXT systems. Given that NeXT only sold around 50,000 machines, this was quite a small audience. Now Apple owns around 10% of the desktop market and anyone who develops with Cocoa can see the attraction in the APIs, so there is a much larger body of interest in GNUstep. The project is still actively developed - we had blocks (which Apple introduced with 10.6) working before Apple released their implementation to the public and had a few of the 10.6 classes (e.g. NSCache) completely implemented within a couple of days of the Snow Leopard release.
What I'd love to see happen with the Linux desktop is some serious re-thinkng of how a UI should be done. Trying to make it like Windows is tragic, and trying to make it like the Mac is just never going to be good enough.
That's what we're trying to do with Étoilé. We're building a document-centric desktop with automatic persistence and versioning integrated throughout the system, and trying to get away from the application-centric model. We've stolen some good ideas from OS X, classic MacOS, NeXT, RiscOS, the Newton and a few other places, but we're not trying to clone OS X, we're trying to build something better. It's slow, but we've made a lot of progress in the last year and having GNUstep as a foundation helped enormously.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"This list of the top influential Executives of the 2009..."
I can haz literazi? ;-)
This is fluff of the type I used to see in WIRED, PCWorld, etc years ago. It is corporate back-patting garbage, of little interest to nerds and real programmers and engineers, many of us still unemployed because the Republicans destroyed America's economy. This is made-up tripe... kings and commissars anointing themselves with badges and awards for pretending to care about those of us below them. The emperor has no clothes. The idea of real and tangible freedom still shines brighter and truer than these corporate priests.
WTF indeed. Let the Slashdot community make a better list. Beginning with some suggestions from TFA (I admit I actually, you know, read it...) comments
Richard Stallman
Linus Torvalds
Eric S. Raymond
Bruce Perens
Tim O’Reilly
Also
Bob Young & Marc Ewing (Red Hat founders) and
Larry Page & Sergey Brin (Google founders)
Because M$ sucks!
Maybe. But your article wasn't titled Most Influential Open Source Executives. It was Most Influential People. Or are you saying that only executives are people?
If only I had modpoints for the parent...: Vellmont is right on the money on the article's motivation. Someone (Roebot) hastes to make a sarcastic rebuttal. Vellmont answers saying "But your (emphasis mine) article wasn't titled...", Roebot replies with yet more sarcasm, without bothering to add a denial about the 'your article'.
He may yet not be the actual author, but the fact that he does not care to deny it tells me something about his mindset...
I have to disagree.
On thing that's seriously broken with modern GUIs is their file- or application-oriented workflow. Everything-is-a-file is a great abstraction when writing code, but it's not how people think.
Things on my wishlist:
* a task-oriented desktop
* easy adding of free-form metadata to files (think digital post-it notes attached to files)
* the gold standard: a GUI that realizes when I'm repeating myself and automates these processes by itself
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Talking to yourself, aren't you? ;-)
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Please note that the subject title for the comment was "Influential Women" as in here is a woman that could(should) be on this list. The Mindtouch blog even noted itself that
No the GP wasn't saying that Leslie is "the most influential open source leader out there" instead they were offering her as an example of an influential woman in the open source movement.
Or to put is simply - you failed at reading comprehension.
This is prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. :P
This guy created the huge sloppy mess that is Drupal. I suppose it may have been influential in that it has influenced developers to look for more mature, well-planned, scalable solutions. Drupal is hardly something the open source community should be proud of.
The UI is more or less a solved problem, sort of like the controls of a car.
If you believe that, then by all means, enjoy what you can buy today. Heck, I know people who still live in EMACS.
-jcr
I do believe that. And the last 20 years of UI design is evidence for me being right. There is incremental evolution, but all the radical concepts fell by the wayside. Good luck with that.
You completely miss the point. Manual gearboxes are all almost the same since the 1920s. A choke is a tiny detail (my bike still has one). Manual steering is a tiny detail (how much effort does it take), and ABS doesn't affect the interface at all.
>> It doesn't scale well or at all to netbooks
Market proves you wrong. The first netbooks had customized interfaces with icon launchers and whatever. People didn't like it. Now almost every single netbook uses bone-stock windows.
>> or smartphones
Completely different and we're not talking about that at all. The topic here is linux UI, not phone-UI.
>> It assumes and requires both keyboard and mouse
That's exactly what I said. The current desktop metaphor will remain until we move on to a different set of input devices. Touch screens will never be mainstream in a desktop computing environment, so that next generation is going to be more like direct muscle or brain input. That's decades away.
All the rest of your gripes are due to shitty software, not anything fundamentally wrong with the UI. There's lots to do, but nothing groundbreaking. Just tweaks.
I do believe that. And the last 20 years of UI design is evidence for me being right. There is incremental evolution, but all the radical concepts fell by the wayside. Good luck with that.
This is true. It also isn't good for development to be excessively radical. Radical development goes at a pace which does not allow human minds to be able to cope.
I still remain very adamantly convinced that the most effective form of user interface in existence, is made up of the group of text utilities that were devised during the 70s and early 80s. They work, they work well, and they also tend to work far more consistently and reliably than the newest GUI environments, as well.
Let us just have reality take over. How many women do you know that will "work" after work? None of my colleagues are willing or even think about work after 5. None of men, that stop work at 5 are ever promoted. The reason that women are out of the list, is because they "have better things to do in their lives". Like watching the next episode of some soap opera or do gardening. I am however sorry for those women that have to work double(and sacrifice double) to overcome the fact, that most of their "sisters" are exactly the opposite.
Some of the most active GNUstep developers (both in terms of core development and building on top of GNUstep) joined the project since 2004, after getting their first experience with Cocoa.
When I talk about the wind being taken out of its sails, I'm referring to interest beyond GnuStep's implementors. I think you guys have done some fine work, but the interest among the users just isn't there.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Firefox has had over a billion downloads - that's not influential??
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
No I am not the author. I'm Aaron Fulkerson. Mark Fidelman was the author. I am a MindToucher though :). I thought that was obvious from my other posts.
When I posted my previous post, yes sarcastic, I didn't realize Vellmont had already quoted the fact this list was of "top influential execs" of open source as defined by 50 something exects from 25+ open source companies. My bad.
My post and reading was brief bc I had my darling 3 year old to take to Seaworld. :-)
Not a looker in the bunch! (sorry, but it had to be said -- also, this list is a sausage-fest)
Bram Moolenaar (vim)
Wietse Venema (postfix)
Guido van Rossum (python)
Stephen R. van den Berg (procmail)
Not the smallest programs either. Yeah i'm proud of my country :)
Heck, I know people who still live in EMACS.
I really have a hard time believing that.
C-x C-s
C-x C-c
Excuse me? You are giving out the impression that your small company somehow managed to grab not one but two most influential people in the open source business. Sorry, but the odds are against you: it's Occam's razor you need to fight here, not tin foil hats. Now, I know you are saying this isn't just your opinion but a survey. There are two things that make this article still smell very, very fishy:
1. You do not say anything about the possible biases your research may have. Anyone with a clue will be able to guess that the sample selection is probably biased to include people involved with MindTouch, Augustin and Asay, but we just don't know. If your sample was "people who responded to the last blog post"... well, that would explain a few things.
2. You never disclose your relationship with Asay and Augustin in the article. Even if your research was sound it would be the right thing to do. Isn't this basic journalism?
I doubt you can just explain this away.
Wait, what? I thought that ESR's "I'm not a racist because I don't think I'm a racist" racism followed from his libertarian-flavored neoconservative ideology. Did he say or do something obnoxiously racist before 9/11?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Another issue with MindTouch: it's a little hypocritical of them to boast about their role in the OS community. You won't find their source code repository without resorting to Google.
Mind you, it's perfectly legitimate to monetize an OS product by building a commercial product around it. But there's more to being Open Source than honoring the letter of your OS-friendly license. It's about engaging with a community of OS developers. Without that, you're just a proprietary vendor that happens to publish some of your source code.
That guy who put that bug in debian's openssl package (...)
I'd say he was pretty influential.. he ruined nearly my entire week :-)
An entire week? Well that's an annoyance for sure, but console yourself and take a larger view: a couple of days ago here on Slashdot and elsewhere, we were just discussing Microsoft's lost decade.
Survey? Correct 50 votes from 25 _companies_. Zimbra, MySQL, Pentaho, Jaspersoft, Alfresco, SugarCRM, Groundworks, Acquia etc... Note: they couldn't vote for ppl from their own company.
As for me managing to convince two highly sought after individuals to advise MindTouch, :-) I can be very convincing.
1. Recall, in the blog post, it clearly describes the sample population. Again in the comments I write about bias and bemoan the lack of women. This is a HUGE problem in open source! It's a problem in tech as a whole, but OS has an even worse problem. Why? I really don't know and I really don't know how to correct this.
Anyway, do you think OSS execs will provide a list distinct from /.ers? Of course. However, I think the suggestions provided here by ./ers are largely disappointing. It's the same 'ol folks. Some of which haven't made significant contributions for many years--YES, they are the pioneers and I'm not discounting this--but this was emphatically a list for *today*.
Here are some folks I would expect ./ers to suggest:
* Eben Moglen (I'm shocked no one has mentioned him)
* Lilly or other Mozillans
* Rasmus Lerdorf, Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski (not a mention!?!)
* Guido van Rossum
* Justin Erenkrantz
* Miguel de Icaza (received only a negative mention I believe)
* Simon Crosby
* Shuttleworth has had several mentions (also was mentioned in the survey), but what about other folks from Canonical/Ubuntu?
2. Mark didn't mention that Matt and Larry being on our advisory board bc he thought it would seem too cheesy/salesy. "YAAAY look at us!" You could be right about disclosing this. If we were real journos/bloggers we would.
The reality of this list is that the people listed here have all made significanat and postive impacts to all 25+ companies surveyed and execs from these companies percieve them to have be influential. For me, there weren't many surprises on the list.
It's easy to find MindTouch source code: http://www.mindtouch.com/Download
However, you're correct about the repo. It is really hard to find. I'll get it added to: http://www.mindtouch.com/community and http://developer.mindtouch.com/
Thanks for the heads up.
If I wanted to make something up to make myself look good, "open source hero" isn't in my top ten accolades I'd like to have.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."