Candidates for 1999 GNU Free Software Award 147
Malcolm Spence wrote in to tell us that gnu.org has posted a list of nominees for their 1999 Free Software award. Includes lots of names you would expect and a few that maybe you wouldn't.
Bill Gates? (Score:1)
--
Bill Gates?? (Score:1)
How about Judge Jackson? (Score:2)
Hmm... Why Bill Gates? (Score:3)
Should I take it that the argument behind naming Bill Gates as a candidate is something like:
I don't expect him to win, but this outcome does offer incredibly entertaining opportunities for the awards dinner.
I'm sure they'd be eating cream pies at that dinner...
Bill Gates??? (Score:1)
Eugene.
I would have nominated the committee (Score:1)
DJ Delorie (Score:2)
Award Comittee (Score:2)
Huh? These guys are going to come to an agreement about free software?
Wow.
Great Choices (Score:1)
The Debian Project! (Score:2)
B) Debian is cool. So what if it doesn't have the latest kernel? It's arguably the most stable and well-designed of the Linux distributions; certainly the most "BSD-ish".
"Take what you can use and let the rest go by." (Ken Kesey)
"Hand in hand, we copy foreigners' merits and compensate our shortcomings." (Fong Sai Yuk) There are flashier contributions from individuals and groups, but personally when I think Linux I think "Debian", on both technical and philosophical grounds.
Congrats to all, and thanks (Score:2)
Far be it from me to spit in the face of such tradition.
Free software has made my life as a sysadmin immeasurably easier, thanks to the lovely people who were nominated (or who won previously). If it were possible, I'd invite you all around to my place for a mug of coffee and to play with my Mindstorms. But it's not, so I'll just say that it's thanks to you all that I've got time most days to post to slashdot.
DJ Delorie (Score:2)
Although most of us here at /. are using Linux, xBSD, or some other form of Unix, the Microsoft world is still the fundamental majority. Delorie's port of GCC to MSDOS, and all the derivatives thereof, played a monunmental role in the development of free software ports in the DOS world. Without his contributions, none of this would have been possible.
On that note: Wasn't the original Quake for DOS written using DJ's gcc?
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
jwz and O'Reilly (Score:1)
Moving beyond blind advocacy is essential for any movement like OSS. Of all the people on the list (except Bill G, who I suspect is on the list as a joke), jwz seems to me the best example of this.
Tim O'Reilly is my second choice. Thanks to him, OSS has a real voice out there in the publishing community. There's nothing to impress your boss like a large number of Linux books next to all the "Be an MCSE in 30 days!" crap at Barnes and Noble. Besides, hard copies make me smile.
----
Re:Bill Gates? (Score:2)
Maybe it's a joke? But if it's not, I'd really love to see him win for precicely the reason you mentioned.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, the this year the award goes to a villain so evil, so crapulent that he's brought us all together. His shitty software is a clarion call to aesthetic programmers everywhere, and we'd like to take this opportunity to embrace Bill and extend the hand of friendship to a man without whom we would all be a bunch of anarchists ranting about the CIA on streetcorners.
"Ladies and Gentlemen... Bill Gates"
But would he accept the award in person or just send Ballmer along?
Something that would be nice... (Score:1)
Re:Hmm... Why Bill Gates? (Score:2)
proprietary software.
You're absolutely correct. He has provided an enormous base of dissatisfied customers, thus contributing to the phenomenal growth of open source. I wonder how many Linux converts this year are former Windows victims?.. Perhaps Slashdot should host a poll: what made you take up Linux in the first place?
(My answer: Solaris. OK, maybe I'm not a good example. Perhaps I should shut up now.)
Bill Gates! :) (Score:2)
Runners up were:
If I could vote... (Score:2)
What would Bill win? (Score:1)
A bag of scorpions?
A bear trap, ready to go?
A super glue coated bowling ball?
A package with a concealed taser, aimed at his testicles?
George
instead of Bill Gates... (Score:2)
human://billy.j.mabray/
Nice list (Score:1)
I'm pulling for the Enlightenment boys on this one.. Better window managers make managing evil networks so much easier. I know there are candidates that *may* be more deserving of the award, but they have chosen to fight for the power of good, which just doesn't sit too well with me.
My nominee... (Score:1)
They are! (Score:1)
Actually, Kirk McKusick, Bill Joy, Jordan Hubbard, Theo DeRaadt and Mike Karels are all on the list, at least when I last checked. (Maybe GNU added them?)
Personally, though, I'd like to vote for W. Richard Stevens, in memory of his great books.
--Joe--
Re:What would Bill win? (Score:1)
I vote for this one!
-Jason
What happens next? (Score:1)
I've not been paying attention to the previous years' awards. Do we vote? Do they vote? Is a name pulled out of a hat?
(Personally, I'd vote for either W. Richard Stevens (RIP), or Jeffrey Law.)
Re:The Debian Project! (Score:1)
"Heheh. Sorry 'bout that."
Re:Bill Gates? (Score:1)
(Not sure about that one though)
---------------
Say this three time real fast:
Linux may mimic Minix, but Minix does not mimic Linux.
would be nice (Score:1)
Also, a more detailed description of what the perosn has done would help.
But they do it all for free, so who am I to complain?
Some interesting choices (Score:2)
Fred Fish - who single handedly (OK, so there were other contributors, but he was the fighting force) brought the GNU tools to both the Amiga and now BeOS.
Rasmus Lerdorf and the PHP Project, but only Doug McEachern and not the mod_perl Project (i.e. all those cool module authors and other significant contributors). I thought that was a little strange.
Great to see some relative unknowns (but significant talent) in there like James Clark.
Re:They are! (Score:1)
Re:The Debian Project! (Score:1)
In my mind, Debian embodies the future of free (as in non-commercial) OS's. Debian is secure, stable, and has high-quality. And it achieved this not by commercial organizations, but by volunteers who did it because they wanted to, not because it brings food to their table.
This, to me, encapsulates what free software is all about -- volunteers producing high-quality products, potentially higher-quality than any commercial offering, and gives it away for free. The ultimate expression of the free software philosophy.
So surely Debian -- the community as opposed to an individual -- deserves this award.
Re:Award Comittee (Score:1)
Bruce Perens will be too busy trying to promote his new website [technocrat.net].
Salus will probably be too busy working on the free buffet.
Stallman, of course will be too busy doing hits of LSD.
Larry Wall will be boring everyone out of their mind with his drug-induced ramblings about onions and whatnot.
Re:Hmm... Why Bill Gates? (Score:2)
GPG? (Score:1)
When and how did nominations take place?
-bc
Ah, ok. (Score:1)
Ah, ok... I had read your original post as "I['d] really like [to] see", rather than "I really like see[ing]". Oops. :-)
--Joe--
Re:DJ Delorie - Ace of Penguins! (Score:1)
When I first installed Linux on my home PC, my girlfriend was so mad because she couldn't play Solitaire and Freecell anymore (I didn't know about WINE at the time). So we made a deal - if I could find a way for her to play those games, then she wouldn't fuss about me keeping Linux on the PC. DJ Delorie's "Ace of Penguins" came through for me, and the rest is history.
So I guess both the techies (DJGPP) and the home users (like my gf and myself) have DJ Delorie to thank for some great pieces of free software. He is definitely a worthy selection.
Re:Hmm... Why Bill Gates? (Score:2)
What Mr. Gates has taken away, Linux has given back.
Is there a "who are these peole" list? (Score:1)
If no one knows of a better idea, I've started the process of making a bare-bones list at http://math.jhu.edu/~martind/fsflist.html - I suspect that someone else will have a better reference, but it's a start. (at the moment the list doesn't even contain all the descriptions of the people I know about)
I'd vote for Tim O'Reilly (Score:1)
"I all ever wanted to know I learned from a man page."
Well.... not really. Sometimes to learn a topic you need a quality book in front of you. No one puts out more quality books, on topics that matter to the open source populace, as O'Reilly has. I've never read an O'Reilly book that I didn't like.... I can't say the same for the other "Using Foo in 14 days for Dummies" publishers.
Re:How about Judge Jackson? (Score:1)
Re:What would Bill win? (Score:1)
Although certainly Bill Gates isn't exactly an example of ethical behaviour that we should all try to follow, I'm surprised to see so many people who are advocating physical violence against him.
Yes, greedy and monopolistic practises are reprehensible behaviour, but physical violence is far far worse. Why are you all stooping to a level even lower than his?
- Drew
Miguel de Icaza the software machine (Score:1)
Fred Fish (Score:1)
Many of the other people on the list would not be there if not for Fred Fish.
Re:How about Judge Jackson? (Score:1)
(Got it this time!)
Re:The Debian Project! (Score:1)
Sure it does, just gotta live on the unstable side (which is really _very_ stable overall, just not recommended for the newbies).
Who should win..? (Score:2)
As the conversation reaches critical mass surrounding Bill Gates, and how he has united hackers everywhere to write ``software that doesn't suck'', I'd like to take this time to point out to you the man whom I nominated.
Tim Berners-Lee
Why him, you may ask? Well, while he did not invent the Internet (neither did Al Gore, for that matter), he did invent the World Wide Web, which popularized the Internet (which has existed for a long time in some form or another).
Now you might be asking: who the hell cares? Easy. You know all those free software projects, where do you read about them? In the newspaper? On television? On.. the Web, maybe? The World Wide Web is the primary agitant that prompted the utter explosion of growth of the Internet. The network and the Web are what free software developers use to coordinate their efforts all across the world. Would we be able to achieve this sort of teamwork without it? Hell no.
Not only that, the Web itself is free speech. Tim is also the director of the W3C, which standardizes HTML, the Web, and lots of other neat nifty things like CSS, etc. etc. If this doesn't represent a strong and continued contribution to the world of free software in the most fundamental, earth-shattering, awe-inspiring way possible I don't know what the hell is.
In short, if they pick anyone else, they better give me a good damn reason why. Otherwise I'm going to wonder about these people. Seriously.
Re:Award Comittee (Score:2)
I'm working on putting up the TIGER/Line 1998 U.S. map database today. It's the complete electronic U.S. street map, available for your use in free software. I've previously had the 1997 version online. I'm also doing some other nice things for free software lately, so what are you doing, huh, huh, come on, spit it out :-)
Re:Award Comittee (Score:1)
As far as I what I'm doing for free software, I'm, uh, not doing much. I did buy some books from FSF though! Does that count?
Why Linux? (Was Re:Hmm... Why Bill Gates?) (Score:1)
I've never liked Windows, from day one. I grew up on the ancient Apple II, then during the "IBM days" switched to DOS 3. In my mind, DOS at least did what it was supposed to do, and did it well. (Mostly because it was easily sidestepped :-)
Then out came Win3.1. I despised it, and basically stayed away from it. Then came Win95. I hated it to the uttermost. I loved DOS then, because at least it let me do what I wanted to do. Win95 imposed all kinds of silly restrictions on me in the name of "protection" yet does not let me do what I wanted to do. I stuck with DOS as long as I could, then realized that it was the end of the road.
Then someone introduced me to Linux. Being ignorant that anything existed outside MS then, I was reluctant to leave DOS (though I couldn't care crap about winbloxe) to use the then-difficult-to-install Linux. Besides, I knew from using Solaris at school that Linux will have memory protection and stuff, which meant I couldn't play with hardware I/O as I've done in DOS.
But then I realized that protection was good, when it was done right. Wincrap for sure didn't do it right -- the "protection" it gives is extremely flakey, and it doesn't give anything in return. Linux gave real protection -- and gave immense power at the same time. From that time on, it was bye-bye windows all the way. I still had win95 on another partition then, but after my HD crashed, my new HD is completely Linux. Not once have I regretted this decision. No more will MS crapware pollute my system! :-)
-- Happy Linuxer
Re:What would Bill win? (Score:1)
Oops, I forgot a few.
How about a lit bundle of dynamite, in one of Melinda's dresses, with a brown wig and bright red lipstick (the Roadrunner almost always falls for this one).
Or make him stand on a big, black X on marked on the floor, while overhead a grand piano hangs precariously from a single rope.
Or maybe tell him that his present is behind a door, but there's really a cannon there, with a lit fuse!
Or we'll give him some Godiva chocolate with steel BBs in it, and then bring in the crane with giant electro magnet!
Sheesh, some people.
George
Douglas Schmidt's an excellent choice (Score:1)
His group has also developped TAO, which is an open-source real-time CORBA orb that was built using ACE. It's really cool stuff. Check it out here. [wustl.edu]
Who's Who of Free Software (Score:2)
Re:Award Comittee (Score:2)
I actually managed to have a civil email exchange with ESR this week, so I doubt that serving on the nomination committee will be a problem.
Thanks
Bruce
Winners of OTHER awards excluded? (Score:1)
So,... do you want to invalidate a candidate? Give him an award and send him $20.00. poof! he's ineligible.
Ineligibility on having received this particular award, I can understand. Ineligibility because you've received OTHER awards is dumb.
Re:Who's Who of Free Software (Score:1)
> Viewing source is viewing art and can inspire.
> Search engines such as google are also good at
> bringing up the home pages of those in question.
And indeed, I have been using search engines to fill out my list at http://www.math.jhu.edu/~martind/fsfl ist.html [jhu.edu]. It just seems it would be nice to have that information collected somewhere so that not everyone had to hunt these names down.
Re:Who should win..? (Score:1)
Re:What would Bill win? (Score:1)
The hottest PC that can be found, installed with nothing but GPL'd software.
Re:Hmm... Why Bill Gates? (Score:2)
Either way, fixed that and one other typo. And you're right; the reason given for the nomination of Bill Gates was something akin to what you wrote.
Re:Who should win..? (Score:1)
we wanted to recognize long-term central contributions to the development of the world of free software.
Re:Bill Gates! :) (Score:1)
Re:What happens next? (Score:2)
Re:Is there a "who are these peole" list? (Score:2)
Alan Cox (Score:1)
This is a joke! (Score:1)
Now why didn't they do it this more seriously?
I mean are they on drugs or something?
All linux developers are worthy of being nominated! Hell, Linux developers are those who have helped most the GNU spirit, after Linux companies (they did it with the suits).
The only serious way to do this is to include all known developers, market people of the GNU world, be it Bob Young, Alan Cox, Linux Torvalds, Eric Raymond, Caldera Folks, Debian, *Bsd* etc.....
Only then should be a general vote on who gets the most vote based on a one year activity.
Other than that, you are only making a joke of yourselves and GNU in general!
Man, Bill Gates?
Who in Hell or Heaven actually typed his name on that website?!!! This guy/girl should stop taking drugs while working!
..? (Score:1)
(first I just can't help but think.. mochaone responds to one of my comments and isn't flaming me? wow)
You could be right about the 1999 thing, but I don't know. I doubt it, but to be fair, I haven't looked into it. However, I might point out that Tim still is the director of the W3C as we speak (here in 1999), and as such contributes to free software and open standards (which help free software) in a very real-time sense. It's not as if he just built the Web and wandered off somewhere to live in a cave. He's probably one of the most vital assets to our community, and certainly one of the least talked about (relatively speaking in accordance with what he's done).
This is not to belittle the efforts of others, but we should probably throw some credit on over to the man who made all of this possible in a way that rivals what other key movers and shakers in the free software community have done (such as RMS).
The Web is the platform we use to voice our ideas, share information, and coordinate our efforts. Truly a Good Thing.
Hacking's Nobel Prize (Score:1)
There should be KDE team and Troll .. (Score:1)
I am not trolling here
KDE changed the desktop on Unix/Linux.
Troll is extremely cool company. They offered Qt for free long before Linux was "cool" in the media and were very supportive of KDE projects.
Speaking of senses of humor.. (Score:1)
Are you paying attention [slashdot.org], Bruce? I sure hope so! ;)
Of course, I just have to wonder if anyone besides me nominated the guy..
Re:..? (Score:1)
hahahah! I guess I do deserve that one. If you check, you'll see that I even admitted you were right. I must be slipping in my old age.
Re:Miguel de Icaza the software machine (Score:1)
Try Sawmill at http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~john/sw/sawmill/ind
GUI guys (Score:1)
--bsDaemon
--dfree@inna.net
Well (Score:1)
Maybe Willie G will win because everyone votes for him as a joke. I think I'd laugh my tushie off if that ever happened
If you think you know what the hell is really going on you're probably full of shit.
Re:DJ Delorie (Score:1)
Choke (Score:1)
When I saw Bill Gates' name on that list I laughed so much I inadvertently swallowed my tongue and choked to death.
Er...I got better...
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
SGI... (Score:1)
Happy owner of a $650 Indigo2, soon to be running Linux,
PM.
Darryl Strauss (Score:1)
Without his 3Dfx drivers, 3D support in Linux at the time the decision to do versions for Linux would consist of a Permedia driver and a buggy G200/G400 driver. Darryl created a stable set of drivers for hardware 3D support, even if it had to be under an NDA. He has, however, released the source to any parts of his drivers that 3Dfx's legal department will let him.
Re:Speaking of senses of humor.. (Score:2)
Tim B-L should get some sort of honor. I'd want to look a little harder at how much of what he's done for Open Systems rather than free software. A lot of people confuse the two.
Thanks
Bruce
Re:Bill Gates?? (Score:1)
Ok, let's think about this, what tech story spread the word about open source more than any other? Hmm.... Well, there were huge gains in market share before the trail, but the only people to read those where techies (and we already knew!).
By some ironic twist of fate, IMOSHO, the anti-trust trial not only spread the word about Linux but took it and shoved it under the nose of Mr & Ms. Joe Average. Linux coverage has now become a staple of the internet and bussiness section. Partially because those who are better programmers than I put in a lotta hours, but partially because M$ tried to use it to "prove" there was competition.
Thanks Bill! Have a GNU!
Re:The Debian Project! (Score:2)
Bruce
Re:The Debian Project! (Score:1)
B) Debian is cool. So what if it doesn't have the latest kernel? It's arguably the most stable and
well-designed of the Linux distributions; certainly the most "BSD-ish".
"Take what you can use and let the rest go by." (Ken Kesey)
"Hand in hand, we copy foreigners' merits and compensate our shortcomings." (Fong Sai Yuk) There
are flashier contributions from individuals and groups, but personally when I think Linux I think
"Debian", on both technical and philosophical grounds.
Um, Debian is NOT the most BSD-ish.
Debian is much more SysV'ish.
Slackware, OTOH....
Re:How about... (Score:1)
And indeed they've taken your suggestion. Donald Becker [nasa.gov] is on the list.
In memory of W Richard Stevens..... (Score:1)
Stevens would still be enriching our knowledge of network programming if he were with us.
Re:DJ Delorie (Score:1)
Charles Puffer
Re:Hmm... Why Bill Gates? (Score:1)
The first time I used DOS, I thought to myself "This is really a braindead operating system", so for a few years I went back to the commodore.
Eventually I was forced to switch to the PC. But the more I started using it and the more it "matured", the harder it became to program the darn thing. DOS was the braindead child of satan (if you've ever had to suffer through near/far pointers, you'll know what I mean), and win 3.1 was no better.
Win95 was no better, in fact, it no longer came with QBasic. MSVC was an abomination, and I was for a few years forced to use it.
Eventually I found something better. It was called DJGPP, and it let me write 32-bit DOS programs using UNIX-standards. I even had bash, the fileutils, basically the whole GNU system installed. (Oh, and I vote "DJ Delorie" for that award!)
I used that for a fair amount of time, and it was so transparent moving to Linux (all I really needed was a text editor that I was good with, and I ended up learning VIM and now swear by it.), that it was a foregone conclusion as soon as I saw it.
I don't know, I think a lot of the success of Linux is based on its pure technical merits. I would have been willing to pay $200 for a copy of any reasonable facimile of UNIX early on... Linux was a dream come true for a lot of us programmers.
Nick Petreley? (Score:1)
and the 1999 FSF ass kissing award goes to... JMC
Re:Hmm... Why Bill Gates? Why Bill Joy? (Score:1)
what has sun or he done done for Open Source Software recently?
Re:Bill Gates? (Score:1)
One (besides me) is missing... (Score:1)
Thank you all for your continuous and generous efforts!
Maybe we'll face a 'grave of the unknown [not only]GNU contributor' someday...
Re:Ah, ok. (Score:1)
Thanks! (Score:1)
Andrew G. Feinberg
With RMS on the committee? No way! (Score:1)
Re:What would Bill win? (Score:1)
I'd vote for Mike Heins (Score:1)
i'd vote for Alfredo Kojima! (Score:1)
James Clark? Geez... (Score:2)
James Clark: Give me a break, folks. What does this guy have to do with free software? Opening up Netscape source code was little more than a corporate maneuver to outsmart MS, IMHO, but look at where Netscape market share is now. Netscape still deserves a special award for being the only piece of software that's able to crash my Linux boxen, though. Show me a popular, usable open source project that was derived from Mozilla code and I will show you vaporware.
John Ousterhout: I guess Berkeley and Sun paid real low salaries, no? There are people who created languages that are far more popular than yours, Sir, but do they have a company? No. Not that it is a bad thing to make profit off your own creation...Either Ousterhout does not belong to the this list, or Larry Wall was really dumb not to go out on his own and start a company to make a fortune out of Perl. He would have showed up on the free software celebrities list anyway.
Definitely NOT Troll Tech (Score:2)
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux [gnu.org] to you mister!
Alfredo Kojima (Score:2)
(WindowMaker [windowmaker.org] for those who don't know what I'm referring to...)
Re:GPG? (Score:1)
I see that the nominee page lists a guy named WERNER KOCH. I wonder if they meant WALTER Koch, who did work on GPG.
And I agree. Access to strong crypto is the ONLY way to guarantee privacy. If you've ever read THE PUZZLE PALACE you'd understand why. :-)
I saw Phil Zimmermann speak in Syracuse a few years back (I also got him to sign my PGP users guide), and he made a good point, INFRASTRUCTURES rarely go away. And now that the telecommunications industry has engineered back doors into their digital switches, our privacy is gone. Having them remove those back doors at this point is just as unlikely as us switching from 60Hz AC to 50Hz AC. It just ain't gonna happen.
Re:James Clark? Geez... (Score:1)
Phil Zimmerman (Score:2)
A good program that you could get the source code to - the first psycho-strong crypto program that I remember that ran on the PC. It might not have been the first, but it was certainly one of the best and it brought "Encryption for the masses" which I remember seeing as a tagline in practically all the README's that came with PGP.
Ahhh..how fondly I remember my pre-win 3.1 DOS days where I would sit about as a total newbie trying to figure out how the hell to use the 10,000 command line switches in PGP.
Anybody have specific info on the license of the original PGP source?