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Open Source Developer Knighted
unixfan writes "Georg Greve, developer of Open Document Format and active FOSS developer, has received a knighthood in Germany for his work. From the article: 'Some weeks ago I received news that the embassy in Berne had unsuccessfully been trying to contact me under FSFE's old office address in Zurich. This was a bit odd and unexpected. So you can probably understand my surprise to be told by the embassy upon contacting them that on 18 December 2009 I had been awarded the Cross of Merit on ribbon (Verdienstkreuz am Bande) by the Federal Republic of Germany. As you might expect, my first reaction was one of disbelief. I was, in fact, rather shaken. You could also say shocked. Quick Wikipedia research revealed this to be part of the orders of knighthood, making this a Knight's Cross.'"
So you can probably understand my surprise to be told by the embassy upon contacting them that on 18. December 2009 I had been awarded the Cross of Merit on ribbon ...
Your surprise (and assumption the rest of us are surprised) is a result of cultural conditioning. Open source developers are (in popular culture where I live) unshaven, smelly, poor, obese, socially awkward, annoying, nerdy, pimple ridden, inferior beasts dungeoned in their mother's basements because they are incapable of anything else.
Despite this being nothing further form the truth, it persists. We often take it in stride and joke about it but that's the conceptualization of a work force so damned important to the entire world it's almost a social injustice. Why, you'd probably have to travel to some "crazy European country" to find otherwise.
One of my friends became a volunteer firefighter because it was seen as dangerous and attracted females when he flaunted his credentials at bars. It was something he put on his resume to increase his pay. Open source should be along the same lines and I predict that in the distant future it will be when a more tech savvy generation realizes that something like ODF equates to billions of dollars in good will and stimulates their economy in the end.
Once a more accurate reflection of this or image is implanted in a generation of children, who knows what could happen?
Congratulations Sir Greve, you no doubt (in my mind) deserve this. Do not be uneasy, you are not alone.
My work here is dung.
Orders of merit which still confer privileges of knighthood are sometimes referred to as orders of knighthood. As a consequence of being not an order of chivalry but orders of merit or decorations, some republican honours have thus avoided the traditional structure found in medieval orders of chivalry and created new ones instead, e.g. the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
You see, it says "knighthood" right there.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
this will refer some more respectability to open source. it is very important.
also i wonder which fool tagged this 'idle'. it is something which will create more clout for os, and also advertise it in the eyes of government level bureaucrats. yet some of you were short sighted enough to think this was an 'idle' affair to be tagged as idle.
Read radical news here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Book_(computer_science)
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
You know, I just assumed that it was a British knighthood. I had no idea other countries gave knighthoods. Live and learn. :)
C'mon, Dott.
Get your own free personal location tracker
want to find an open source project to help with?
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Now, that you are a knight, which Trojan horse will you be riding on?
Congratulations though!
You can't handle the truth.
No offense to Brits
Ah, an American. Do I detect a tinge of jealousy there? Don't worry, in a couple of hundred years you won't be the new boys any more. I'll still have trees in my garden older than your whole country, though.
The US should give Richard Stallman the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
We've got trees in our backyard that are older than your country as well. Actually, they're older than every country still around today.
Bristlecone Pines
Especially since they forgot to mention is the founder (and president) of the FSF Europe.
Dilbert RSS feed
What have you done that's likely to last a hundred years?
There's plenty of recursive functions and while loops that spring to mind.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
I know we get dozens of stories every week that deserve filing in idle.slashdot.org because of their relative irrelevance as "news for nerds". Now, this is about one FOSS developer who actually receives some official recognition for his efforts. It has an impact (even if minor) on the prestige of FOSS including this Linux-thing and these Open-somethings. In his own words:
By awarding this Cross of Merit, the Federal Republic of Germany recognises the importance of both Free Software and Open Standards.
As for what the chap did, he summarized for us the reason given in the mention:
According to the rationale, the Cross of Merit was awarded for my work for Free Software and Open Standards, starting from my being speaker of the GNU Project, including my very first speech, my work on the Brave GNU World, over driving the creation of Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), to the work done around the Open Document Format (ODF) and the work for Open Standards in general with a variety of hats.
So, all things considered, attaboy!
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
This isn't the first time the German government shows respect to F/OSS:
Matthias Ettrich, founder of KDE was knighted late 2009.
Some German cities announced in 2003 that they'd be moving away from Microsoft, towards Linux. (source)
Munich is one city that I know of that has actively been moving their infrastructure towards F/OSS. (source)
(Disclaimer: I'm not German, I'm just going by what I read on the internet.)
+1 Funny Signature
For starters, he's a German national and hence the US Constitution is not relevant.
Next, he was not granted a title of nobility. He was given a medal that in other certain countries would rank equivalent to the knight level in a typical order of chivalry.
On top of that, being a member of an order of chivalry is not equivalent to being a member of the nobility. I should know, as I'm myself a knight in a Belgian order of chivalry. Just about any Belgian army officer (reserves included) who has been active for long enough is a knight in one or more such orders. That does not make them nobility.
If you consider unknown Belgian awards to be too obscure to be a reference, look at the famous "Knights Cross of the Iron Cross", so well known that it is often just referred to as "The Knights Cross". This award - in its various gradations - is very well known for being the most desirable award anyone in the WWII German armed forces could receive. But rest assured that winning one did not imply any title of nobility being granted by mr. H. who, in fact, despised the old German nobility. Besides, from a legal point of view nobility was abolished in Germany in 1919.
Linux user since early January 1992.
I too once received a knighthood: "Dear Sir.... I am writing you on behalf of the exile king of ........ Our kingdom would like to reward you the golden cross, our highest recommendations, a knighthood.
In exchange for this great honor, we would like you to help with releasing the frozen accounts of the king, by allowing a small sum to pass through your account ....."
Apparently after you get knighted, it's standard form to make self-deprecating humourous remarks about it. Sir Terry Pratchett was talking about it at the DiscWorld Con last fall in Arizona, and said that one thing he really enjoys about it is that when he's dealing with bureaucrats who used to bully him, now that he's *Sir* Terry, he's able to bully them back, so dealing with bureaucracy has become much less onerous.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks