Vote:Unsung Hero 13
The Unsung Hero is the guy that has done so much work to help make this Open Source thing great, but he just doesn't seem to end up getting his share of the spotlight. The nominees are Alan Cox, David Dawes, Donald Becker, Jordan K. Hubbard and Brian Paul.
Vote for that you think hasn't got the credit he deserves for all his hard work.
Re:Unsung indeed (Score:1)
Re:Unsung indeed (Score:1)
Re:Jordan K. Hubbard (Score:1)
Is linux smashing the path for FreeBSD?
Which FreeBSD-STABLE are you referring to? The entire CVS branch?
Heroines? (Score:1)
Re: Jordan K. Hubbard (Score:1)
When I read The Cathedral and the Bazaar (the dead tree edition), it struck me how well he presented the BSD case in a world where few people look beyond the CNN headlines.
<ObTroll>
I disagree with Eric Raymonds insinuation that the BSD license caused the fragmentation in the BSD camp. The legalistic battles don't deserve the credit this insinuation gives them. I've always written the fragmentation off to too many strong egos.
<ObTroll>
Jordan Hubbard, as well as FreeBSD, deserve more credit than they sometimes get. Bickering about who was first to break the ice, who is more Open or more Free is entirely counterproductive. I'm still torn on the question of whether world dominance by Linux would be a good thing. On the one hand, I hate to see the fragmentation this world sees, with its duplicated efforts on writing device drivers and stuff. But I'm still leaning to the thought that survival of BSD as a significant underflow is a good thing, in that it broadens the gene pool without undermining Open Source.
Linux brought legitimacy to Open Source, which allows me as a BSD/OS user to run cool stuff like Gnumeric or GIMP. Enough folks from non-Linux communities help bear the weight of building and maintaining such tools, and the broad gene pool underneath such apps bring bugs to light that wouldn't have surfaced as fast if all the world ran Linux with glibc 2.1, which in turn eases the pain of future Linux upgrades.
United we stand. Divided we fall.
David Dawes and Brian Paul (Score:2)
This leaves David Dawes [usyd.edu.au] and Brian Paul [mesa3d.org]. 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.
Jordan K. Hubbard (Score:2)
Mr Hubbard is the obvious choice here. FreeBSD, while it ain't LInux per se, led the Open Source movement into Corporate America. Without FreeBSD-STABLE as the icebreaker with the iron hull smashing a path for us, Linux would not be the wild success that it is.
FreeBSD will always be unsung. But it will also forever lead the way in the less glamorous server market by simply never, ever crashing. We ought to recognize that.
Donald Becker for Unsung Hero... (Score:2)
Die-hard Open Source programmer that help maintained and delivered most common Linux network drivers ranging from IDE/PCI Ethernet, Fast Ethernet [nasa.gov], 100VG Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, PCMCIA Ethernet and supported Infrared Networking for a wide range of platforms (Intel, Sun, Mac).
Let us not forget Beowulf [nasa.gov]
I've put many hours support his endeavor and would like to see his name recognized for all of us hard workers.
Unsung indeed (Score:3)
So for all other like me, here some short bio's.
Alan Cox (not spelled Allen Cox) is a primary author of the
linux networking stack, and generally does alot of work for
Linux in a variety of different areas, from suggesting changes
to VNC, to the MMU-less palm-pilot Linux port, to the gnome
project. He is one of the most brilliant Linux developers I know,
and has been the most helpful in enabling me to do my own
Linux development (primarily in the area of PPP, L2TP, and
Multilink PPP). By being brilliant, helpful, approachable, and
available, he
David Dawes was a PhD student in Theoretical Physics when he started playing around with X source code. He is still working in the
same place, at the School of Physics, Sydney Uni, although now he is the Network Administrator. He works on XFree86 in his spare
time.
Did quite a lot of network drivers for linux. Most of the drivers for 3com cards are his.
Hawaiian born, he is one of the big cheeses in the Free BSD
project. He was one of the original founders, as well as the
release coordinator. He lives with 14 cats and works at
Walnut Creek CD-ROM. [14 Cats? That makes him cool by me!]
Brian Paul is the original author of the mesa3d library. (No, it isn't called mesagl! No! Bad neuron!)
I couldn't find out who abstain was, does anybody know?
Sorry that some of the bios are short/incomplete, I either didn't know, didn't care or didn't have the time. Pick any three.