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2nd Annual Free Software Foundation Awards
The awards were given out in conjunction with theBazar, a gathering of Open Source experts, boosters, and devotees featuring a number of tutorials on assorted Open Source and GNU/Linux-related topics.
Last year's Award for the Advancement of Free Software went to PERL-meister Larry Wall. This year the three finalists were Donald Knuth, John Gilmore, and Miguel de Icaza.
And the winner was (drum roll please) Miguel de Icaza!
Miguel lent the proceedings a moment of extra drama by arriving - literally - at the second his name was announced, right after RMS said he was not there and could not, therefore, be expected to make a speech. But there he was, and the speech was both brief and charming.
A surprise award was also given to Blockstackers, which has donated a significant amount of money to the Free Software Foundation. This award was accepted by a shocked - and literally blushing - Rob Malda.
We join the Free Software Foundation in congratulating Miguel de Icaza.
See pictures of the award ceromony and participants here.
NT.
i dont display scores, and my threshhold is -1. post accordingly.
Congratulations to Miguel de Icaza!
Being almost a die-hard command-prompt (bash, et. al.) user, though, I can think of many other people that also deserve such awards. I wonder if we can get ZD (almost certainly MSNBC wouldn't cover the Tux Awards!) to do a 3 hour awards show that runs at least 45 minutes over?
Next time I run X, I guess I'll take a peek at Gnome to see what the fuss is all about.
Doug ---- Co-host of Ghostly Talk
First, the story clearly stated that the pics might not be available for up to an hour, so have some patience, cowboy. Second, don't you know how to hack a URL? The correct location is probably going to be something like http://kurt.andover.net/bazar/fsf - It looks like maybe Roblimo got a bit confused in the cut and paste or else the URL got interpereted as a relative rather than absolute URL.
/. trek to Comdex last month or whenever that was... The URL for that is http://kurt.andover.net/
Anyhow, until the Bazaar pics are up, you can still waste your time looking at the fun pics from the
No really, great.
I'm glad that the FSF is getting recognition.
BUT
As an NYC resident, I wish I'd known even 24hrs sooner, so I could actually go to the event.
This sig left unintentionally blank.
I recognize that Gnome is an important step for linux (err.. unices in general) to move towards the desktop, but it certainly isn't ``core functionality'' that I need my computers to do. I mean, there are parallel technologies which allow similar things.
TeX on the other hand, has been around for a long time and is used non-stop in the lab where I work. Without it, the reports we dump out would probably take forever to make. I can't imagine using Word (or any word processor for that matter) to create documents that change as much in revision as ours do. TeX is a much more earth-shattering development than a spiffy new interface to X.
I think the FSF awards copped out and picked based on ``current and trendy'' instead of deserving of an award. Of course, if there is a monetary award involved (since there's no article, I can't tell, but I imagine there is), then I can see the politics behind it. Gnome sure needs cash more than any TeX-related project.
Congrats to the nominees and the winner.
-Chris
Not to belittle Miguel - his work on bringing free software to the masses is very commendable, and Gnome is in and of itself living proof that you can actually build relatively good software using languages from New Jersey (*rimshot*) - but he just doesn't stand up to Knuth. I mean, the guy's a shining beacon of excellence in computer science. Miguel himself probably learned a lot of programming skills from Knuth's books. If anyone deserves a big fat award, it's old Don at Palo Alto. The only perspective from which I can conceive of Miguel as being more award-worthy than Knuth is the "making free software user-friendly" idea. (That is, as user-friendly as an Un*x gets. *rimshot*)
So I hope that Knuth gets what he deserves next time. (It wouldn't hurt to give him a couple of VA shares either.)
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
I'm proud to say that I voted for Miguel and very I'm pleased to see him win. He's done so much and really deserves the award. He seems to have that "benevolent dictator" aire about him that Linus exhibits. I think he's another excellent leader/coder. Keep up the good work Miguel.
----------------
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
Let please not only focus on GNOME, Miguel has contributed to many GNU projects. Anybody using RAID on Linux is using Miguel's code. Also if you have ever used Linux on a SPARC you can also thank Miguel since he was also involved with that.
It looks like the real URL for the pictures is: http://kurt.andover.net/bazar/fsf
or http://kurt.andover.net/bazaar/fsf, but note they won't be up for another hour or so.
Also, ZDTV will be broadcasting the awards here: http://www.zdtv.com/radio on Thursday, Dec 16 2:00pm http://www.zdtv.com/radio
Yes, I know putting them under the comdex dir is asking for trouble... but at least they are there
pax, Bishop
--------------------------------------------------
How come this wasn't webcast? These awards have more relevance to me than most awards on broadcast TV.
Because when reading all about Miguel and Eric getting free trips to NY and being able to support themselves doing whatever they want to do, not a single piece of software that I use day to day was written by either of them and I've never heard of anyone trying to integrate an actual piece of code of Miguel or Eric's into what they're doing.
Look at that thing!!! It's much cooler than an oscar. It has a picture of a friendly bearded GNU on the front, could probably double as a blanket for a midget, and looks like it's the exact same thing as free software - homemade. :)
Very colorful. Oscars just gather dust on shelves. This thing can hang on the wall. Very nice. Wish I had one.
OK, Knuth deserves one, sure, but he's not dead yet, and there will be awards like this in the future. Knuth may be VERY deserving of one, but it's hard to say that Icaza isn't deserving as well.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
It gives recognition where recognition is due, it's fun, and it's a good excuse to draw attention to free software, which does encourage people to write free software.
And as for whether or not the code is used by you or not, there's a lot of code that you don't use. There are a lot of people who never use perl and don't code in it, but that doesn't mean that larry wall didn't deserve his last year. It's not necessarily about whether or not you use it, but about the impact the software has had.
And GNOME has had quite an impact. It went from buggy and barely realized to quite a nice system in very little time. And it's developing faster and faster as time goes on and as more people learn about GNOME. For that reason, even though I think it's had a big impact, the impact it has now probably isn't anything compared to where it's going to be in 2 more years
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Roblimo left out the "http://" -- to see the photos, click here.
-
<SIG>
"I am not trying to prove that I am right... I am only trying to find out whether." -Bertolt Brecht
<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
One thing I'd like to see is some captions on the pictures. I can guess who some of the people are by context, and I *know* who some of the people are (RMS is rather, um, recognizable...:) but I just can't place a lot of the people in these pictures.
Perhaps I'm looking at the wrong URL, if so, sorry...
--J(K) DOS is like Unix in exactly the same way that a pinto is like an aircraft carrier.
I think this why Knuth didn't win. TeX is an integral part of the GNU system but isn't as important as GNOME. As far as all of Knuth's other accomplichments, well, I don't think the award is about that.
I personally feel that Knuth should have gotten the award but I can understand why Miguel got it. Just look at everything he has done with GNOME:
So it makes sense really. But still, developing TeX and making it free... a difficult thing to compete with.
Congratulations to Miguel and the finalists... and thanks.
(I sincerely hope there is no political hocus-pocus going on... I don't think so but...)
Hey,
Does being our geekie selves mean we can't manage to put a caption on a few measly photos or put them on the web in thumbnail size that can be expanded? I mean, have we sworn off making things remotely user-friendly when it come to a simple web page or something? No one ever tells me these things.
Look at this
Has anyone else noticed that RMS looks a helluva lot like Ron Jeremy there?
I bet with a little shaving, RMS could be the next great porn star!
Whoa.. the /. crowd goes nuts again...
There were probably about 125 people in the audience by my estimation.
RMS explained why they eliminated Knuth from the 3 finalists by basically saying that he was in a whole other league and has already won just about every award out there and there wouldn't be any point in adding yet another award to the long list. He is already recognized.
-Rasmus
Software hoarders may have loads of moneeeeeeeeeeeyyyyy....
That is truuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuueeeeee hackers that is trueeeeeeeeee....
By the way, if you're looking for a techno version of the free software song, look no further:
http://opop.nols.com/krank/rms.mp3
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
I feel really proud that a fellow mexican
:)
wins this award, specially since his effort
to make linux more friendly, will help our
schools, which belive me, need LOTS of help.
Education in Mexico doesnt have a big
budget, and the best public schools at the most
have a couple of old pentiums. My mom was a
teacher in one of the top 3 public schools in my city,
Mexicos seconds largest and richest, and they only
have 20 or so old pentiums.
A lot of companies are donating old equipment
to the schools and only linux and gnome will make
this equipment useful and worth using.
Not only does he deserve the award for technical
merit, but also for his social awareness; well,
at least for what he has done in Mexico
Again, congrats Miguel!
This paid my last vacation, it mi
(Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs! Don't forget the http://!)
I got moderated down massively in the past for f*c*ing that one up.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
I don't understand this.
So some of you guys think Miguel won the award because his contribution is more recent?
Then why do they even bother to include Knuth as one of three finalists?
There are tons of free software projects out there. Why didn't they pick one of those programmers? And how Larry Wall got the award last year?
Testing turning off the +1 bonus in KFM again...
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
I have been following the GNOME project since Miguel was writing the predecessor to Gnumeric in Scheme. (Yes, Scheme.) During this time, I have never seen him bash anyone or anything. He even gives credit to Microsoft, for cryin' out loud (for good GUI design in Word and Excel, in case you're curious). The only criticisms I have seen him make are of 1) Microsoft's business practices and 2) the old Qt license. These were reasoned criticisms that actually explained how consumers were hurt and focuesd on positive solutions. There was never anything approaching "bashing". Miguel is always one to say "I believe" or "many people prefer" or "there are concerns about". He almost never explicitly says "This is bad."
Since the new Qt license, I haven't seem Miguel say a bad word about KDE. His only comments are ones of encouragement and praise for the virtues of "competition". By the way, did you know he uses FreeBSD as well as Linux? Now he tests his software on his own box, running FreeBSD. So he's not bashing anyone in that camp, either.
Despite the divisive flames of people like you, the actual KDE and GNOME developers are working closer than ever before. Window managers like E support them both. The only thing lacking is a common object model, and programmers from both sides are working on the idea.
Stop trying to sabotage the free software movement. Stop slandering Miguel.
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
True, Knuth does not need another award. But to nominate him, shortlist him for the finals, and then not give it to him on these grounds, is ridiculous. They could have shortlisted someone else, and announced that they weren't considering people like Knuth.
I reposted some of the photos at http://gphoto.org/fsf-award99/
Another little note: I counted approx. 160 people in attendance. They were spread throughout a large room so the photos didn't capture them all.
- Robin
You obviously can't prove your claims about IRC, but what about these supposed media "FUD"? Where are the articles? Post some URLs. Then we can all judge for ourselves whether he's a good software diplomat.
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product