It's easy to find MindTouch source code: http://www.mindtouch.com/Download

However, you're correct about the repo. It is really hard to find. I'll get it added to: http://www.mindtouch.com/community and http://developer.mindtouch.com/

Thanks for the heads up.

Survey? Correct 50 votes from 25 _companies_. Zimbra, MySQL, Pentaho, Jaspersoft, Alfresco, SugarCRM, Groundworks, Acquia etc... Note: they couldn't vote for ppl from their own company.

As for me managing to convince two highly sought after individuals to advise MindTouch, :-) I can be very convincing.

1. Recall, in the blog post, it clearly describes the sample population. Again in the comments I write about bias and bemoan the lack of women. This is a HUGE problem in open source! It's a problem in tech as a whole, but OS has an even worse problem. Why? I really don't know and I really don't know how to correct this.

Anyway, do you think OSS execs will provide a list distinct from /.ers? Of course. However, I think the suggestions provided here by ./ers are largely disappointing. It's the same 'ol folks. Some of which haven't made significant contributions for many years--YES, they are the pioneers and I'm not discounting this--but this was emphatically a list for *today*.

Here are some folks I would expect ./ers to suggest:
* Eben Moglen (I'm shocked no one has mentioned him)
* Lilly or other Mozillans
* Rasmus Lerdorf, Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski (not a mention!?!)
* Guido van Rossum
* Justin Erenkrantz
* Miguel de Icaza (received only a negative mention I believe)
* Simon Crosby
* Shuttleworth has had several mentions (also was mentioned in the survey), but what about other folks from Canonical/Ubuntu?

2. Mark didn't mention that Matt and Larry being on our advisory board bc he thought it would seem too cheesy/salesy. "YAAAY look at us!" You could be right about disclosing this. If we were real journos/bloggers we would.

The reality of this list is that the people listed here have all made significanat and postive impacts to all 25+ companies surveyed and execs from these companies percieve them to have be influential. For me, there weren't many surprises on the list.

No I am not the author. I'm Aaron Fulkerson. Mark Fidelman was the author. I am a MindToucher though :). I thought that was obvious from my other posts.

When I posted my previous post, yes sarcastic, I didn't realize Vellmont had already quoted the fact this list was of "top influential execs" of open source as defined by 50 something exects from 25+ open source companies. My bad.

My post and reading was brief bc I had my darling 3 year old to take to Seaworld. :-)

"This list of the top influential Executives of the 2009..."

I can haz literazi? ;-)

Get your tin foil hats out.

If you look at the boards of the top 25 open source boards you'll find many of these people on the list present. I'd say this is likely a significant factor in establishing these folks as the 2009 Most Influential Open Source Executives? Wouldn't you?

Actually, I wrote that next year we will include CTO and VP of Eng votes in the survey as well. It's a terrible thing we didn't this year. But we didn't expect a byproduct such as this. Had we, we would have segmented the list to be sure to capture influential persons on the engineering/innovation side.

A digression, as for "Big Boys" I have always found it interesting that open source execs typically come up from an engineering track. This is less the case with proprietary software.

I'll reiterate what I've written elsewhere about this list. I can speak from my experience in both building software on open source, working at proprietary software companies and in founding and building an open source company, this list doesn't hold many surprises for me. I write this because over the last four years of being solely focused on building an open source software biz, I have witnessed the people on this list as being the most active. How so? By helping young open source companies (yes, companies) to get their start and in helping proprietary companies to transition to an open source model. These people are responsible for a very significant amount of code being released under open source. This is true because many have pioneered sustainable models, actively influenced "Big Boys" to open source code, helped other young-uns to innovate and even have opened their own wallets to fund the development of open source software.

As for those early pioneers of open source, there can be no doubt they have had a huge impact. However, there is no doubt in my mind that history will prove this list to be a quality sampling of the **current** positive influencers.

You have never heard of VA Linux, Sourceforge, SugarCRM, Redhat, Alfresco, Drupal? Really?

I want to note there are a few who actually contribute code listed. BUT it's important to understand that this top influencers list was actually a byproduct of a survey conducted establishing best practices in open source sales and marketing. Hence the distinctly business slant. This list of top influences has been so remarkably well received that we intend to do it every year. However, in the future survey we will include CTOs and VP of Engs in order to create two categories. Business/Law and engineering. Thanks for the feedback. Please post additional suggestions to the post and we'll try out best to incorporate them.

That consultant is a moron. In fact, when software companies hire having experience contributing to an open source project is a big big plus on your resume'. Moreover, the only way an enterprise software company can compete and be successful in today's marketplace is to employ open source as a development model to create pull for the product.