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Miguel de Icaza Named 'Innovator of the Year'
Solipsist_Nation writes "John Benditt, Editor-in-Chief of Technology Review, said of their Innovator of the Year, 'De Icaza was chosen both for his accomplishments in the GNOME Project and as a representative of the open-source software movement, which embodies a creative new mode of innovation: a large-scale collaboration over the Internet. People like Miguel are the future of technology.'"
Did I read that right? Isn't that somewhat ironic? Isn't this the same guy who predicted the death of the Internet, Linux, civilization, etc?
That statement is not really very accurate now is it? Windows and icons? Linux had those way before GNOME. Perhaps MIT is just a little bit in the dark? Besides, what about KDE? That's just as user friendly and not half as buggy. Not that De Icaza didn't do a good job, he is doing a very good one and I think eventually GNOME will kill KDE, but so far, they still have a looooot of bugs to fix.
"De Icaza was chosen both for his accomplishments in the GNOME Project and as a representative of the open-source software movement..."
If De Icaza is anything like RMS, I don't think he'll like the confusion between open-source and free software .
There's no reason for a sig here.
De Icaza was chosen both for his accomplishments in the GNOME Project and as a representative of the open-source software movement, which embodies a creative new mode of innovation
Is what he has contributed to the GNOME project especially "innovative"? Worthy of "Innovator of the year". I've done development, and it is more about common sense than innovation. Choosing him as a "representative" is "off-topic". Also check the language here - Spin doctoring - its all form and no content.
De Icaza was selected from this distinguished group as Innovator of the Year for his success in leading the team that is simplifying the Linux operating system
This is management, not innovation.
I do not wish to detract from Miguel de Icaza's contribution, I accord him much respect. But I do question this award. It is establishment. I say again, the emperor has no clothes.
It can be found here http://www.techreview.com /tr100/nominee-info/tr100_2.html
There's no reason for a sig here.
What makes GNOME more innovative than say, KDE? I'm sorry, I don't mean to present any bias. I'm just wondering. I've only used KDE and am very happy with it. Or is the "Innovator" part of the award just revolved around the fact it is an open-source project being managed across the internet? If that's the case, then I would guess it was just the luck of the draw who got the award considering how many great open-source projects are out there.
Congrats again to Miguel and the other TR100 winners.
I dont believe his speech at the gala is archived anywhere without charge, but it was worthy of an open source project leader. He gave many thanks and raise to the other volunteers on GNOME and other GNU pioneers. Mostly he was just very excited about the whole thing like the rest of us.
Miguel recieved funding just 10 days after the Nov 4th, 1999 event and him being named the top of the 100.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
There's no reason for a sig here.
I don't mean to belittle Miguel's (indeed impressive) achievements. However, can we really consider something like GNOME to be a great innovation in this day? GUI systems have been around since Xerox PARC's Alto, and desktop environments with common UI tools and guidelines have many precedents (Macintosh, NeXT, OS/2, Windows). Compound document architectures aren't new either (Wang devised one which MS copied for OLE), and object-oriented application kits date back to Smalltalk.
Is GNOME really a profound innovation, or merely a case of good engineering using already established techniques to fill a niche?
He put the "human" in "human Gnome project".
There's no reason for a sig here.
Okay, an object oriented library is nice, but easier to use for MFC programmers?!?!?! I hope the QT people don't see you saying that!
Moderate this up, this is funny!
--
Avoid the Gates of Hell. Use Linux!
Hmmm... a Xerox STAR (is that what it was called?) theme.. now there is an idea. If only I knew what it looked like.
You obviously have not used libglade. Libglade is a library that can load the interface xml files created by glade, and create a gui from them at _runtime_. This makes for a lot quicker development as it's visual, no need for a recompile in many cases, and allows users to change the interface files and fix UI type bugs in them without _any_ programming experience. Sorry, I believe gnome is futher along in this arena.
He is truly not a nice person. He learned all of his tricks on how to destroy other people's work and trash people from King Richard.
Hey we could have said the same for linux on almost all these points a few years back and gave up.
Development continues, no one is dead until they stop.
Finkployd
He's not a Minority, He lives in Mexico, Spanish speakers are the majority there. Now when he moves to the US then he will be a Minority.
Just to clear things up.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
I agree. It seems from many of the posters, there appears to be ignorance of the significance of awards to the community. It doesn't just benefit Miguel, it benefits free software as a whole. Consider it a stamp of approval on the work Miguel has helped with. It is this work that my parents can run Linux and with some awards to dispell the FUD, my employer might be next to benefit from running a better computing environment.
I feel there is a lot of unjustified hecklers lately that are even going far as making personal threats against those who contribute. They appear very disturbed. Maybe its because they are threatened by Linux?
A lot of people are going to object to this but what's so Innovative about Gnome ? I have sean it read the docs, dissected the specifications used and customized the interface to death ( literally ) and it still isn't a radical concept.
The whole "OSS is way to make software concept is of corse old news. Yes Miguel is a nice guy and frankly I think he should get a medal but not for innovation. This isn't even M$Inovative since it wasn't intended to hurt customers or competitors.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Moderate this up, this is funny!
Its not even factual and offtopic character assassination at best. I have met three of the above mentioned people and this appears to be a work of fiction by a newbie.
1) Oh for fucks sake... how long do we have to deal with this childish angry ego crap. IT'S NOT GNU/LINUX, sheesh. Yes we all give thanks to RMS for all of the great GNU stuff. I love emacs, i get a friggin hard-on just watching it come up. And yes... Linux would not have the popularity it has today without all of the great gnu tools... Yes RMS has made a great contribution to the *nix commmunity...Here... I'll shout it out for you:
THANKS RICHARD, I AM FOREVER IN YOUR DEBT !!!
There.. now can we just get on with it.
2) Gnome is great, KDE is great. So everybody can just shut the fuck up and use the one you like the most. Competition is healthy, it's good for both sides, so lets act like friggin adults here and build those puppies to the best of your ablilities and be a fucking adult about it and the whole world will benefit from 2 great open source products.
Christ, sometimes you fucking 12 year old pissant angry geeks just make me wanna install Win95 again .
A genius writes code an idiot can understand, while an idiot writes code the compiler can't understand.
If you compare bleeding edge Gnome with 1-year-old KDE 1.1x, this may sound sensible, but with KDE 2 technology, this is absolutely ridiculous.
This is a sensable thing to say. Both desktops are pretty equal if you compare similar releases (if you substitute October GNOME instead of GNOME 1.0.x). GNOME 2, IIRC, will sport much of things KDE has. It isn't as far developed though but look for some things in GNOME 2 that KDE won't have for a while.
It is pretty clear that KDE is more Windows-like, I think it has also borrowed some UI from the Mac and OS/2... but it is still heavily Windows like. GNOME gets its UI from NEXT, Motif, CDE, and some Windows influence as well.
Overall, I like the GTK widget set better than QT. This has nothing to do with theming either. I use GTK's default theme. The buttons are a little larger. The gray is a little lighter. The widgets are spaced apart a little more. I think GTK has a more pleasant feel to it.
But, really now. The differences betweek KDE and GNOME isn't much more than personal preference.
(I won't comment on the untrue comments about CORBA.)
Only Innovator of the Year? These days I would have expected him to get Innovator of the Millennium (okay, maybe he'd be pipped to the post by Britney Spears or something).
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Bob must like the taste of processed wood pulp. Otherwise he'd stop this "I'll eat my column if I'm wrong" business. Or actually try being right for once.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Linux in itself is not particularly technically innovative. it is based on a classic monolithic kernel design like traditional unices, and modelled on SysV (and to a lesser extent BSD). This is opposed to systems such as the HURD, which is considerably more novel, and countless weird concept OSes that never get a large installed base because few people are willing to get their heads around an alien paradigm.
More novel is the open-source concept and the distributed ("bazaar") development model, though again, that derives from the GNU project, and the hacker culture in general.
Linux in itself is not particularly technically innovative. it is based on a classic monolithic kernel design like traditional unices, and modelled on SysV (and to a lesser extent BSD). This is opposed to systems such as the HURD, which is considerably more novel, and countless weird concept OSes that never get a large installed base because few people are willing to get their heads around an alien paradigm.
More novel is the open-source concept and the distributed ("bazaar") development model, though again, that derives from the GNU project, and the hacker culture in general.