Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Miguel de Icaza Named 'Innovator of the Year'

Posted by Roblimo on from the another-something-of-the-year-award dept.

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.'"

6 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. The Emperor has got no clothes... by JimStoner · · Score: 5
    Do you remember that story from your youth. Well I think it applies here. Lets read between the lines:

    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.

  2. Full top 100 list by Asparfame · · Score: 4

    It can be found here http://www.techreview.com /tr100/nominee-info/tr100_2.html

    --

    There's no reason for a sig here.

  3. On the Topic of GNOME by seaportcasino · · Score: 3

    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.

    1. Re:On the Topic of GNOME by Arandir · · Score: 3

      No, that is not the "standard way to do things in unix". Programs that are part of the same project may have different version numbers, but the project still has it's own version. KDE 1.1.2 contains KMail 1.0.28, KFM 1.167.2.21, etc., but all the user needs to do is to download KDE 1.1.2.

      However, with Gnome, it can be very frustrating to download. Don't just use it off of a distro, but go out and actually download all the parts. Say, you're trying to upgrade to a fictious "december Gnome". Do you need to upgrade libxml as well? What about ORBit? If you're one of the fortunate people with fast connections, you'll probably just download it all, but those of us with 56K or slower modems (I reckon the majority) don't want to spend five hours downloading everything in the repository.

      I haven't downloaded Gnome in a few months, but the last time I did, I checked the online documentation that listed what was required, downloaded it all, and then found out that several packages were too old.

      --
      A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
  4. Are GUI/object systems really innovative? by acb · · Score: 3

    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?

  5. Re:Perhaps... by #include · · Score: 3

    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.