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FSF Seeks Nominations for 2nd Free Software Award
Andy Tai writes "From the GNU website, the Free Software Foundation is asking for nominations for the 1999 Free Software Award. Nominations are due October 8. Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds and Larry Wall are not eligible since they have been already awarded. More information can be found on this page. "
(founder of Walnut Creek Software)
:-)
I've got no idea if he ever wrote a line of code.
But this guy has done a lot for various communities on the net. Back, when CDROMs where a brand new and obscure technology, he maintained the alt.cdrom faq.
With his company he established a business model which still today provides the infrastructure for a number of free software and content projects. I remember quite well when the OS/2 community had trouble keeping it's central archive (hobbes) alife years ago. He jumped in and offered the whole archive a new home.
Granted, today that's seen as normal, but back then, bandwidth was hard to come by and this business model was new alltogether.
Today a number of well known software, content or archive projects are at home at Walnut Creek, most notably Slackware Linux and FreeBSD, but also the idsoftware games editing crowd, as well as ftp-os2 and even the most traditional archive from the dos-windows world, simtel (once simtel20 at white sands missile range). You also find a batch of smaller projects based more or less on cdrom.com.
All in all, I think, an impressive contribution. (Plus, the man runs world's busiest ftp server, and it's always a pleasure to do business with his company
So much for that. (now flame me. Or correct me, where I'm wrong)
How about Matrox? They've always had specs released to the Open Source, from the original Millenium card onward.
And I don't want to start the Specs vs Drivers thing =)
As much as I like Apache, I doubt their license will be acceptable as "free software" by FSF's definition. 'Tis really a shame, though...
Hmm, isn't KDE based on the non-free QT libraries, which are in turn QPL'd? (Whatever that means) I don't know if KDE would qualify as free software...
RMS won a MacArthur Grant, the "Genius Grant," a
few years ago for his efforts towards Free
Software. Since he's already won an award for his
work, he's not eligible for another.
My nominations are:
Brian Paul for the excellent crossplatform OpenGL compatible graphics library MESA. It provides a real alternative to commercial OpenGL and gives Linux a competitive 3D language.
The Olivetti Research Laboratory (now at AT&T UK) for a program I use every day - VNC. This program is used for remote control much like PC Anywhere or even X-Windows and it runs on Unix and Windows. Clients for Unix, Win, Mac and Java.
It would qualify as free software, but the advertising clause would probably rule it out.
or the whole samba team
Samba is so great cause it sticks up the nose of NT/9x people.
It has been said to outperform NT.
It gives a reason for linux to invade MS space (if indeed you need a reason)
It deserves some sort of award
I forgot to mention the most important thing.. both Mesa and VNC are distributed under the GPL. These are two great gifts to us all, so please mail award-nominations@gnu.org and put in your vote like I did! :)
I disagree. The most important medium was and is e-mail. Then add ftp servers. For a time the combination e-mail/Usenet was very helpful, while today most development coordination retreated to mailing lists.
Take the GNU project for instance, their WWW site is relatively new compared to their other infrastructure, and most important software (gcc, emacs and the likes) was developed before the WWW became popular. Not to mention the BSD software that was spread on tapes.
The WWW is a very useful media, but e-mail, ftp servers and probably CVS are still more important IMHO.
Yes, it would raise the reputation of that price considerably, if they would give it to a deserving recipient of the license-rivaling free software camps, like xfree86.org, Apache team, the BSD folks and maybe one day Mozilla.org.
If RMS feels left out by the Linux community in certain aspects, he should not make the mistake to leave out the other fighters for the common goal!
I wrote a letter of nomination for Alan before I read this discussion. Enclosed forthwith.
I hereby nominate Alan Cox for the 1999 Free Software Award
nomination.
Alan Cox is perhaps Linus Torvalds's chief lieutenant. I think Alan
should be recognized, however, for a very specific task that he has
willingly taken on: maintenance of old stable releases of the Linux
kernel. This is not a glamorous task, but is one that is essential to
counter the impression that free software lacks support.
Alan has taken it upon himself to maintain the 2.0 and 2.2 Linux
kernels while others forge ahead with the more exciting work of
designing new features for the development kernels. While the
stability of Linux 2.0 is legendary, bugs are occasionally discovered,
new devices become available, and security holes are found. In order
to be accepted for mission critical applications, old versions of
software must be supported, with critical items such as these fixed.
Responsible software vendors have always provided such support, and
Alan's work has made it possible for free software to be held to such
exacting standards.
In addition to this key responsibility, Alan is also a major
contributor to the development kernel, and particularly concerns
himself with low level kernel functionality and devices, which are
notoriously complex yet essential pieces of functionality.
Finally, Alan ceaselessly promotes free software in all forums in
which he participates.
For these reasons, I believe that Alan Cox would be a deserving
recipient of the 1999 Free Software Award.
therefore I nominate Eric Allman.
I took a class (on Sendmail, natch) at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, and his was the best of the bunch I went to.
Beyond that, his is one of the earliest, and most interesting approaches to integrating open source development and commercial distribution methods.
d$hahin
I mean, who HASN'T hade some piece of their email delivered through sendmail?
to mail me, first remove the evil spam.
no individuals but i think the apache group as a whole have done a great deal for opensource. not just the core group but also the modphp, modssl & modperl guys too. Apache is probably the second most visible thing after GNU/Linux and I use their software everyday. Way to go guys
Cant think of anyone who deserves it more (except maybe the *bsd guys)
stty erase ^H
I agree! Guido has written fantastic software. I do not agree for ESR, but that's clearly emotional (I do not appreciate his techniques). VOTE FOR GUIDO!!!
especially the guy that did mod_rewrite & mod_ssl
stty erase ^H
Nick Moraitakis
-- say with me: i'm a monkey child
KDE and Lyx - both GPL software. Enough said.
Anyway, I don't this TBL should be nominated, I was just making a point
And KDE has always been Free.
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KDE has always been Free Software.
I realize you're just trolling, and you're probably a paid astroturfer, but still, others might be reading who actually believe the garbage you're spouting.
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Although many in the BSD crowd earn my disdain, I have nothing but respect for Hubbard. An award to Hubbard from the FSF would be a great symbolic gesture.
No, they're not good examples. nVidia has still not released the specifications which would allow others to write the drivers. At least I don't think so. And 3Com took it's good, sweet time. There are certainly more open companies than these two.
There are so many people who deserve this.
Ulrich Drepper (or maybe Cygnus) - glibc maintainer
H.J. Lu - Binary utilities and other stuff
Alan Cox - kernel coder
Andreas Zeller - DDD
Who ever wrote cvs is worth a price.
I believe Larry Wall won the award for 1998 (that's why he's not eligible).
~ Kish
Eventually, all the other people in the world will have won the prize and no longer be eligible and I will win by default! Yippee!
FreeBSD is free software according to the FSF. It falls into the category of non-copylefted free software. And since Berkeley recently rescinded the obnoxious advertising clause of the BSD license, BSD is now as free as X11.
"Why not actaully give an award to the people who actually DID make this happen for once instaead of just some figure head."
The people who win this award are hardly just figureheads (well, unless you really don't like gcc, gdb, GNU Emacs, the Linux kernel, and Perl all that much and think we could do without them.. perhaps even better off that way!) in our community, they are also a very lively part of it! So far, the people who have won have made this happen in a /very/ real way.
Without Richard Stallman this wouldn't have started in the first place, without Linux Torvalds we wouldn't have had a complete OS just yet, and without Larry Wall.. it wouldn't be nearly as fun to code, damnit (he made patching easier during the process, too)! What's not to love?
"If it weren't for their hard work (much of it in their free time), and their blatant fanatacism about creating things that work and are free then there would be no open source / free software movement."
I'm not sure who this describes best other than Richard Stallman, so what do you mean "for once"? :)
~ Kish
You are Gerald Holmes and I claim my copy of space cadet (not free but worth the money!)
:-)
For TeX, which was created at a time when open source was unheard of and giving software away for free quite unusual. He spent ten years on it (and quite a number of $2.56 cheques ;-)) and delivered a high-quality product running on about any platform. TeX and additional software are used all over the world.
Hmm, isn't KDE based on the non-free QT libraries, which are in turn QPL'd? (Whatever that means) I don't know if KDE would qualify as free software...
Not to worry KDE has always been free software, and the latest version of KDE is based on a free (in FSF sense of the word) version of QT.
I too agree that Matthias deserves to win this award, I know I voted for him!
Like letting RMS and friends develop it, then telling them to P*** off. (See the RMS talk in Stockholm)
John
John_Chalisque
A vendor (who shall remain nameless!) suggested that he'd be game to help sponsor some "RMS Award" at every Linux conference if this would result in him behaving a bit better. It appeared that there was sufficient support that they could put together enough to:
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Didn't he also do LyX??
John
John_Chalisque
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
No KDE or QT supporters should qualify, since their software requires a library that is not really free (Qt is required; a miniumum of $1550 is required for commercial use)
Reference : "The Professional Version of Qt vs. The Free Version of Qt".
So, Alan Cox, Richard Stallman(probably not eligible), Patrick Volkerding, the original Gimp developers, or Oliver Fourdon (www.xfce.org), would be better choices (IMHO)...since their source is free and available for all uses, and they seem to adhere to the classic "small, elegant, beautiful" UNIX faith in the face of humongous, intertwined code globs like KDE, Java and Gnome/E.
For the data display debugger, which makes gdb usable
Apache is for the domination in server area. For the real World Domination on Desktop area, I will vote for the KDE team. Without KDE, my roomate will always boot into Windoze. Now we use Linux ALL the time. Is this award is for a team as well ?
You're missing the fact that the rules that apply to this particular award prevent anyone previously awarded elsewhere from qualifying.
This one is obvious...even if he didn't write a piece of software we all use today, he certainly gave birth to a rather popular platform.
You're a suburbanite.
Hey, maybe the slashdot crew should be nominated.... after all, they're about the most crucial part of the linux news world... and as everyone knows, news is important. Usually. ;-)
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
FreeBSD's Jordan K. Hubbard
I wrote a Hello World app once and I will freely distribute the source code.
I'll second that
char *stupidsig = "this is my dumb sig";
Does the award include a grant of $$ or is it just so that the winners can say "I won this award."
-cf
Spurtjizz Nutwallop's contributions to the Free Software movement, not to mention the open source community, are immeasurable.
Alan Cox
People are quick to point out the "current" or "latest" cool free software projects. How about the authors of something that has truly made a difference, and for a long time at that: The Apache Team.
Apache is clearly one of the cornerstones of Linux WorldDomination(TM)... it would be nice to recognize those responsible. (Of course, I'm not actually familiar with the development team, including how large the "core" is.)
-Brian
...Miguel de Icaza. He seems to be a great leader, coder, and not to mention a really nice person.
----------------
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
This would be a nice memorial.
Miguel (and whatever infinite energy source he runs on) have made HUGE contributions to free software, moving Gnome from a new idea to a significant desktop environment in an amazingly short time. I know that many people have contributed to Gnome, but Miguel is The Man. :)
Look at all that ESR has accomplished this year with Apple, and various others. Vote ESR! And if not, vote for Jordan (FreeBSD guy)
There are various reasons why:
1) The AC is truly distributed and open, unlike others who are closed, proprietary entities. The AC exists as a conceptual entity, much like Free Software. Not only is the AC similar to free speech, but he dishes out vast volumes of it. (Some would say too vast).
2) The AC has stimulated various debates on various issues. Often with dumbass comments, the AC stirs up high emotions and profound criticism.
3) The AC always gets the first post. This is a dubious achievement at best, but he takes innocent pride in it like a happy little kid.
4) The AC has often submitted critical insider info from the CIA, Microsoft, IBM, and many organizations; he has gone where lesser mortals feared to tread.
5) The AC is unique - he is loved in the abstract, yet hated at almost every appearance he makes. In fact, this is the reason why he is the AC.
6) The AC has become a part of the OSS psyche; in the press there are frequent references to him. Almost like Superman or Batman, people speak of the AC as some kind of superhero (or supervillian) whose identity is unknown....This introduces an element of comic book intrigue and suspense into an otherwise dull and boring profession.
7) Everybody has been an AC, they just won't admit it. Thus by rewarding the AC, you reward the whole community.
8) The AC exists in multiple places at the same time, thereby providing redundant backup and stable, 24x7 service.
9) The AC is intellectually complex. He is international, posting in strange languages nobody can understand. He is mysterious and abstruse in his thoughts, which may contain hidden truths masked in the form of annoying spam like troll.
10) It's difficult to draw out the AC. He has never been seen, but if he wins the award, he may appear to accept it....We can finally unmask him and see what he looks like...
L.
Who won the last one? I can't seem to remember.
Maybe this time, he'll get the award he deserves.
First of all, FreeBSD isn't under the GPL, so forget that. Second, wouldn't your ballot be better spent nominating Spurtjizz Nutwallop, who has done far more for the open source community?
Yes. My mention of Matthias is not in any way a slight of the GNOME people. They are doing good things, too.
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Yes. That's correct. LyX, and then KLyX.
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Strange nobody wrote this before. It seems rather obvious to me.
/.ing to all.
Well, maybe we'll wait till next year, and give this year's award to Eric S. Raymond, but after that, the Slashdot founders are likely to get it...
Besides, maybe the year after we'll have to give it to the KDE team, for by that time KDevelop will be the No 1 IDE and KOffice will ship more copies than MSOffice and Staroffice together; but in 2001, you can be sure our lovely friends will be the happy winners...
Oh, I forgot Alan Cox... And Marc Ewing too.. and BSD's Hubbard.. And Gnome's de Icaza.. And the guys of Apache... And Phil Zimmermann.. And Donald Knuth (if still alive)... and...
Oh, well, they're young after all, let's hope they'll get the prize before they're too old to type on a keyboard...
Thomas
Happy
hey, this post should be awarded a higher score and be marked "funny", cause it is!
A while back someone said something about Linus Torvalds having gone on record as saying "GNU/Linux" was the official name.. If anyone actually knows of an online resource which proves that, please email me. I've yet to see an interview with Torvalds that even /mentioned/ GNU. :)
So as to not /totally/ escape the topic, however.. Obviously with all the code these guys have churned out, they aren't just "idea men". The reason why they aren't eligible to win anymore is so that other people can be recognized, which is good because I of course agree that others should get some credit too. I think all the real "heavy hitters" will get the award over the next few years, so it will all balance out.
~ Kish
It's pretty funny.
Ok, I'm not... I actually just pressed the "Post Anonymously" button for the hell of it.
I've never posted before because there's rarely anything I can add, but in this case the Slashdot community has made a glaring ommission.
http://www.jclark.com/
groff, sgmls, technical lead for WWWC XML.
This guy has done an amazing amount of the heavy lifting.
Cheers -- hba
Only entropy comes easy.
-Lewis Mumford
wow. I am even agreeing with Ben Tilly on something... Miracles do happen. :)
Steve Ruyle
Ex Libris Veritas
Andrew Tridgell should be nominated, whether or not Samba outperforms Windows of any flavour. Samaba is one of those things that SOMEONE would eventually do but he did it first. Everyone uses it, it comes packaged with just about any form of Unix you can get ahold of, Sun even uses it with Solaris. What if he AHDN'T decided to hack M$'s SMB protocols? Someone would have done it but it probably would have been Novell or Sun or some other M$ competitor which wouldnt have released it to the public and that wouldn't do anyone any good and would probably mean M$ could really institute their all-M$ offices and computer labs, since only M$ products could communicate with M$ products, you'd have to use their products.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
1) W. Ricahrd Stevens - his books probably educated ALL (90 %? 95%?) current UNIX programmers or most of them actyually read some of it. without his technically marvelous books, maybe the UNIX world wont have great programmers. this would be a great tribute to him. 2) the BSD developers 3) Apache developers 4) Alan Cox
Raph Levien is working on a lot of projects, most significant the GNOME Canvas, GPrint, and the first free SVG implementation, Gill.
For his Emacs contributions.
By dominating the pre-installed / OEM software market with low-quality proprietary software, Bill Gates has created an environment where Free Software can flourish. Keep up the innovation Mr Gates. Cheers, smithdog
Second?
I put Matthias at the top of my list because at a time when CDE was the pinnacle of UNIX GUIs, he saw the need for a real UNIX desktop environment, and started the long process toward the very usable KDE that we have today. His work and foresight is making acceptance of Linux and Free/Open/Net BSD on the desktop possible.
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Open-source evangelism is my job.
I think Raster should be nominated, as if it wheren't for him, FreeBSD and GNU/Linux would look so damned attractive to people who can't deal with Tcsh, and M$ would have a greater market share, not to mention that it is the first fully gnome-compliant window manager, and Gnome stole a bunch of morons from MS for RH... not like i care..I use Fvwm 2.2.2 and a bunch of X terms
That foobar guy i see mentioned everwhere should get the award.....he must have contributed tons of software :)
But how about Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie or Brian Kernighan?
Without their contributions of Unix and C, free software may never have come about.
My journal has hot
I agree with other people that GNU should also look at BSD contributers (as their code has always complied with the definition and philosophy outlined). However, I personally don't know how much someoe like Jordon K. Hubbard contributed, except I know he's done a huge amount of work.
The only BSD person I can know who has done a huge amount of work (that I can point a finger at) is Theo de Raadt, the founder of OpenBSD, a main financial contributer, and major coder. OpenBSD is widely considered the most secure operating system both Linux and other BSDs have incorperated their code. That's the point of free software, to share and improve the community.
In any case, someone who knows more please reply and list whose done a lot of work (and how) in BSD. GNU shouldn't neglect BSD because of a conflicting licsense, or that Linux is in the media blitz right now.
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
Absolutely! I don't use KDE so much these days, because of slow processors and small monitors on both my Linux boxes but it was crucial in getting me through the days of total cluelessness when I first started. I've been playing with Kdevelop lately and am as impressed as I had expected I would be. I can't wait for KOffice.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Wow, the FSF gave an award to Richard Stallman? And I bet they were 100% objective..
Face facts, one of the biggest way that Linux sneaks in the back door is because of Samba. Once it is there it grows, but Samba in many cases is the necessary first step without which Linux either would not be considered, or would have been thrown out because it could not integrate itself in the existing environment..
I therefore think that Andrew Tridgell deserves this award (and more pizza).
Cheers,
Ben Tilly
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
I agree with you 100% - KDE is an extremely important project, and a significant factor in the acceptance of using operating systems like xBSD and Linux by average desktop users.
Oh, and before I'm flamed/moderated down:
I hope this doesn't degenerate to a KDE vs Gnome flamefest, but IMHO, KDE has been more important to OSS until now. It's KDE that is bundled as a desktop environment by default w/ SuSE Linux, Caldera OpenLinux, Mandrake, and probably others.
I like (and use) gnome, but it's too fidly right now for Joe Average, and not as usable as KDE. Hopefully that will change soon, and even non technical users will have a real choice.
-W
Let's not forget all this bitchin OSS has to have hardware to run on. These are two companies that seem to be committed to the idea of open HARDWARE as well, and that cannot be overlooked.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
Alfredo Komjima who has blessed us with Window Maker.
...for the wonderful LyX and for KDE.
He funded a new home for RMS and gave me Internet Explorer. All those for free !!!
Personnally, I put Guido van Rossum on the top of my nomination list for the stuff he made with Python: creating an easy, flexible and powerful language, fully extensible and integrable with current existing C code. I also vote for him because of his implication in the learning of programming for masses. I think it's a key-issue for a durable success of the Open Source model.
But I can't forget the work done by Eric S. Raymond in domains like sociology and economics of Open Source, which were still underknown before he popularized these.
[sorry for my english, it's not my mother tongue]I don't know about you, but I only see maybe 15 -20 names on this page, and afterall it is the people of the open source community that have made it the success that it is. If it weren't for their hard work (much of it in their free time), and their blatant fanatacism about creating things that work and are free then there would be no open source / free software movement. I think that it is funny when a big star wins an award and they say "I'd like to thank all the people who made this happen..." Why not actaully give an award to the people who actually DID make this happen for once instaead of just some figure head. That's my $2*(10^-2) worth.- --
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Please give your mod points to others, Im at the cap. They will appreciate it more