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Free Software Foundation Awards Tonight
Leslie Proctor writes "The Second Free Software Foundation Awards will be held in New York at theBazaar Tuesday, December 14th at 7pm. Finalists for the award, honoring advancement of free software, are: John Gilmore, Miguel de Icaza and Donald Knuth." We ought to have a short report on the ceremony (and who won) up shortly after the event; CmdrTaco, Hemos, and I are all here in NYC, laptops in hand.
Let's see, Miguel de Icaza is the head of Gnome. Gnome is part of the GNU Project. GNU is the FSF. Thus, the Free Software Foundation has awarded itself the prize for the Free Software Foundation Award!
Next on Geraldo, Linus Torvalds awards Alan Cox, Bob Young awards Matt Ewing, and Larry Augustin awards Eric Raymond. Bitter at not winning Larry's prestigious plaque, Rasterman creates his own award and presents it to Mandrake.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
As much as I despise Sendmail's arcane design in a world of T3's and 2GB of ram (and I really do hate its design), It's tough to deny the effect Eric Allman has made on open software. Sendmail has long been the example of the quintisential piece of open software, it does all things for all people, while delivering one of the backbone services of the Internet and still remaining the standard in it's field. I dont know if it's technically "Free" software (I've not read the license in years) but even before apache sendmail was THE reason to run the free unix systems like Linux and 386bsd.
-Rich
TeX is very well documented, especially its line breaking algorithms. I'd almost bet money there are some commercial systems which use TeX's excellent algorithm. (However, I can assure you that MS Word doesn't.)
I use TeX for everything I write, and I used it throughout college. I find it far easier to use than programs like FrameMaker.
But I'd rather acknowledge Knuth's rigorous study of algorithms over his (still amazing) TeX.
Think about it. Suppose the canapes are lacking that certain je ne sais quoi. If the recipe were freely available, the combined effort of chefs worldwide could make it tastier, less bloating and more attractively presented. When chefs can read, redistribute, and modify the recipe for an appetizer (hereafter referred to as an "app"), it evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people add fresh-ground pepper using one of those increasingly long and phallic peppermills. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional canape development, seems astonishing. I want to know what went into the shrimp cocktail, dammit!
You need only read Martha Stewart's ground-breaking essay, The Burger Chain and the Bistro and her follow-up paper, Homesteading the Noodle Soup to convince you of the virtues of open source catering. Then just as you support the open source software developed by fat men (computing is a sedentary profession, and many of its bright lights could benefit by visiting the gym), let's also support the open source cooking of the Two Fat Ladies!
You can also do your part by not eating closed source food. Kentucky Fried Chicken (the Colonel's secret recipe, remember?) is particularly bad, but the worst is McDonald's, who refuse to divulge the recipe of the Big Mac's "secret sauce," and threaten samller developers with FUD (Fries, Uncertaintly and Doubt).
I'd be really up for this (living in NYC), but I don't see a post on Slashdot until the registration is closed.
Haw badly does that suck?
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Since some of the award nominees have used commercial software, I find it would fundamentally compromise my principles to attend the awards. If your writeup is funny, I might see it and smile, thus myself deriving indirect benefit from the commercial sale of software, so please stick to the facts :)
At this overview page, one can see how far Open Source software has come now. The choice of topics is very wide, and although centered on web related applications (document management included), some tutorials are about GNOME, KDE or Open Source in general.
For the people who have the privilege to go, the choice of which tutorials to attend is not easy...
Just curious, I didn't think his books were actually open source, that you could get them for free or anything like that....
Well, Knuth is the father of TeX (well-known and usefull typesetting system) which is "free" in the best sense of the word. And as for his book, publication of algorithms (in books, academic papers etc) is not only part of forming a foundation for those who write free software - but it also prevents companies like "those we all know and dislike" from doing their patent-stunts and preventing free software authors from writing their software.
So I guess that Knuth indeed does deserve to be nominated - he's doing a lot of good for free software.
Go Knuth
-- "Life is a bitch - and she hates me..."
can be found here.
To quote from the page: "We want to give this award to a person who has made a great contribution to the progress and development of free software (free as in freedom; see our definition of free software), through activities that accord with the spirit of free software."
I guess I'd vote for Knuth. Not just for TeX....but also for his other, widely *published* work on algorithms. While not necessarily being free "software", algorithms (and knowledge about) are important for free software....
Go Knuth (not that the other nominated aren't worthy...they definitely are...)
-- "Life is a bitch - and she hates me..."
On the other hand, it helps raise the profile of "Free Software" and that's no bad thing. If it also -encourages- people to be more involved, rather than more prize-hungry, that would be great for the entire "Free Software" community, and possibly offer a wake-up call to other award ceremonies.
In short, something like this should be treated like any other bug-fix. If the code(ers) gains, keep it in, otherwise back it out. The glitz is irrelevent.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
John Gilmore isn't as well-known as he should be. Of the candidates mentioned, he's most deserving of the award.
Things he's either started or made major contributions to include Cygnus, EFF, the alt groups, GNU tar, GNU gdb, Kerberos, BIND, and the Cypherpunks. He's perhaps the most important activist for overturning the US anti-cryptography laws.
Check out his biography.
As a native New Yorker I was deeply concerned over the posibility of a transit strike happening. (If no reconsiliation is met the strike is set to start at midnight Wednesday morning).
:)
Suddenly its all clear!
1) The FSF is holding its awards in NYC on wednesday.
2) Microsoft is a large supplier of software to government.
3) Obviously, in an effort to insure poor coverage and a poor turnout at the FSF awards, Microsoft has gotten the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority who run our busses and subways) to make a 'strike' happen. If the MTA didn't do this then Microsoft would withhold some crucial patches to Microsoft's "Big Government '00" (y2k edition) software.
Of course an alternative view is that in an effort to promote the view that reliance on one vendor is a bad thing, RMS is actually instigating this so people see that relying on one Transit Authority for all your commuting needs is a bad thing.
(removing toungue from cheek)
On the other hand it could just be bad management/union negotiations
- Reunite Gondwana-land
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You can use the algorithms in anything you like. You probably won't be using the source directly, but if you are (making a derivative of the tex program), you can make changes via change files.
Take a look at ctan for more details (http://www.ctan.org).