I'm happy to see Carmack on the list. Allthough I have no interest in his games, it is his type that occationally makes it worthwhile to read/. comments. There are basically three types of comment posters:
1) The flamers and off-topic posters. 2) The people who seem to have an opinion on everything, but insight in nothing. 3) The (rare) people some first hand knowledge about the topic being discussed.
I vote for Carmack as representing the third category. Those comment posters who makes it worth browsing through the first two categories.
I agree about the voting after where the money will do most good, at least for the big award, instead of after a literal interpretation of the question. The big award is a significant sum.
However, I also believe Wine is the project that could use the money most. It does _not_ get money directly from Corel, Corel has their own version of the source, and occationally the merge back contributions to the main Wine CVS repository. Also, Corels goals are different from the Wine project, examplified in Corels KDE-specific GUI patch. I believe the money could help keep Wine alive independent of Corel, and implement features that are less important to Corel.
The answer is in the FAQ. PGP support will be added as soon as someone submits the patches. PKI was added because someone ("Alliance") submitted the code.
If nobody are willing to do the work, the work will not be done.
Most Improved Open Source Project / Most Improved Kernel Module
Actually, I voted for the projects where I think the money will do most good to the community as a whole. This may be against the spirit on one level (it is not what the question states), but probably in the spirit at another level (it helps the open source community).
Unsung Hero
Here, I removed the names that pop up constantly, and checked that the remaining person had done somthing worthwhile.
Best Open Source-Related Book
Here, I chose the one whose authors and creation best fitted with my idea of open source.
Yes, he would have been perfect for the award. Apart from his i18n work, he has done a lot of work maintaining various GNU utilities of the kind that everyone uses, but few people think about.
It is silly to speculate about whether someone who is giving away their own money are or can "cheat". Also, the first step was not a vote, it was a nomination.
It is obvious that the vote is biased against emacsen, by listing both variants of the One True Editor (ahem). This will cause a split vote, thus leaving the lesser editors with a chance. Compare with the evil Roman numerical editor, of which only one variant is listed. No `nvi', `elvis', or `vile' options. Thus, the victims of vi will all vote for vim as what they think of as the lesser evil (and evil it is!).
Alan Cox, Donald Becker and Jordan K. Hubbard are big names, whose praise is often sung here on/., and they deserve it. But it also mean I can't vote for them for this award with good conscience.
This leaves David Dawes and Brian Paul. Brian Paul wrote Mesa, and is thus hopefully praised for it among people more interested in 3D than me. David Dawes appears to be an "ordinary" XFree worker, who happened to be with the project from the start, and is still working on it in his spare time.
To me, this leaves David Dawes as the perfect candidate for this award. A person doing a lot work in his spare time for an important project, without getting a lot of credit. I.e. a hero that most of the free software developers can relate to.
I read the link pretty quickly...is this the DOE funding it? It looks like it. Does anyone know of any govt issues with GPL'ed software?
Well, given that the development Gnat (GNU Ada) was founded with the specific requirement that the code was made GPL, I doubt the government as a whole has problem with GPL'ed code.
I don't see the relevance of motivation for a postulated "classic OSS model" in a project where US$200.000 will be invested in development.
What can happen is that the new utilities are anough of an improvement for some project to switch to, but that the wast majority will stick to the existing well known tools, since they are "good enough" and most developers already know them. This means that the programmers most likely to improve the existing tools will use something entirely different instead for their projects, so the majority will end up with worse tools than they would without this competition.
Mozillas best chance is probably outside the wintel market, in alternative OS'es and as part of non-PC devices. The new Mozilla structure (and its status as open source) makes it easy to create specialized subsets, and port them to all sorts of devices. This may in fact end up being a lot more than a niche.
Minix was broken (not properly supporting 32 bit platforms), and not really fixable (the license only allowed distribution of fixes in form of patches).
RMS doesn't slam the MIT X license in particular, he is advocating the benefits of copylefts. If you don't want a copyleft, the MIT X license is fine. I believe he described it as "a simple non-copyleft free software license with no particular problems" at one point.
... suck as cook, many of them arguably better. The reason they don't take off is that GNU make is "good enough", and people already know make.
The same is true for all the programs they want to replace. At best, this competition will give some developer experience they can use for enhancing the standard tools. At worst, it will divert some free software talents towards enhancing and maintaining a little used set of alternative tools, rather than enhancing the tools used by the rest of the community. Most likely, someone will have wasted US$200.000.
Well, they are, in a legal sense. They are a registered tex-deductable charity.
Regarding their distribution, think of it as a way of raising fund. Most charities sell stuff at high prices for that purpose. It is often easier to order something, that to give a donation, especielly in larger organizations.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm happy to see Carmack on the list. Allthough I have no interest in his games, it is his type that occationally makes it worthwhile to read /. comments. There are basically three types of comment posters:
1) The flamers and off-topic posters.
2) The people who seem to have an opinion on everything, but insight in nothing.
3) The (rare) people some first hand knowledge about the topic being discussed.
I vote for Carmack as representing the third category. Those comment posters who makes it worth browsing through the first two categories.
I agree about the voting after where the money will do most good, at least for the big award, instead of after a literal interpretation of the question. The big award is a significant sum.
However, I also believe Wine is the project that could use the money most. It does _not_ get money directly from Corel, Corel has their own version of the source, and occationally the merge back contributions to the main Wine CVS repository. Also, Corels goals are different from the Wine project, examplified in Corels KDE-specific GUI patch. I believe the money could help keep Wine alive independent of Corel, and implement features that are less important to Corel.
I don't have details about Norway, but Free Speech has much less constitutional protection in most European countries, than in the USA.
There is a petition against the treatment received by Jon Johansen in Norway. Read it and sign it.
Not just as himself, but representing those rare comment posters who only post when they have sopme special knowledge or insight to share.
:-) ]
[ A group obviously not including me
If nobody are willing to do the work, the work will not be done.
Mozilla deserves the honor, but what good will US$30.000 do for the project? I think the money can do much more good for some of the other projects.
Actually, I voted for the projects where I think the money will do most good to the community as a whole. This may be against the spirit on one level (it is not what the question states), but probably in the spirit at another level (it helps the open source community).
Unsung Hero
Here, I removed the names that pop up constantly, and checked that the remaining person had done somthing worthwhile.
Best Open Source-Related Book
Here, I chose the one whose authors and creation best fitted with my idea of open source.
Yes, he would have been perfect for the award. Apart from his i18n work, he has done a lot of work maintaining various GNU utilities of the kind that everyone uses, but few people think about.
It is silly to speculate about whether someone who is giving away their own money are or can "cheat". Also, the first step was not a vote, it was a nomination.
It is obvious that the vote is biased against emacsen, by listing both variants of the One True Editor (ahem). This will cause a split vote, thus leaving the lesser editors with a chance. Compare with the evil Roman numerical editor, of which only one variant is listed. No `nvi', `elvis', or `vile' options. Thus, the victims of vi will all vote for vim as what they think of as the lesser evil (and evil it is!).
This leaves David Dawes and Brian Paul. Brian Paul wrote Mesa, and is thus hopefully praised for it among people more interested in 3D than me. David Dawes appears to be an "ordinary" XFree worker, who happened to be with the project from the start, and is still working on it in his spare time.
To me, this leaves David Dawes as the perfect candidate for this award. A person doing a lot work in his spare time for an important project, without getting a lot of credit. I.e. a hero that most of the free software developers can relate to.
I don't see the relevance of motivation for a postulated "classic OSS model" in a project where US$200.000 will be invested in development.
What can happen is that the new utilities are anough of an improvement for some project to switch to, but that the wast majority will stick to the existing well known tools, since they are "good enough" and most developers already know them. This means that the programmers most likely to improve the existing tools will use something entirely different instead for their projects, so the majority will end up with worse tools than they would without this competition.
Mozillas best chance is probably outside the wintel market, in alternative OS'es and as part of non-PC devices. The new Mozilla structure (and its status as open source) makes it easy to create specialized subsets, and port them to all sorts of devices. This may in fact end up being a lot more than a niche.
You can see the "official" status message this was taken from. Search down for the entry named "Seamonkey" dated january 10th.
Minix was broken (not properly supporting 32 bit platforms), and not really fixable (the license only allowed distribution of fixes in form of patches).
They aren't exactly robust, depending on space vs. tab often leads to problems.
RMS doesn't slam the MIT X license in particular, he is advocating the benefits of copylefts. If you don't want a copyleft, the MIT X license is fine. I believe he described it as "a simple non-copyleft free software license with no particular problems" at one point.
That's answared in the FAQ. Short version: It's very complex, they want experience with replacing the simple tools first.
The referees are all presented on the project home page.
cook home page
The same is true for all the programs they want to replace. At best, this competition will give some developer experience they can use for enhancing the standard tools. At worst, it will divert some free software talents towards enhancing and maintaining a little used set of alternative tools, rather than enhancing the tools used by the rest of the community. Most likely, someone will have wasted US$200.000.
Regarding their distribution, think of it as a way of raising fund. Most charities sell stuff at high prices for that purpose. It is often easier to order something, that to give a donation, especielly in larger organizations.