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Call For Open Source Awards 2008 Nominations 58

chromatic writes "Google and O'Reilly have published the Call For Open Source Awards 2008 Nominations. These awards, given at OSCON 2008, recognize individual contributors who have demonstrated exceptional leadership, creativity, and collaboration in the development of open source software. The nomination process is open to the entire open source community, and nominations close on May 15. Here's your chance to sing the praises of previously unsung hackers."
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Call For Open Source Awards 2008 Nominations

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  • by eldavojohn ( 898314 ) * <eldavojohnNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday April 26, 2008 @01:08PM (#23208074) Journal
    They're missing a category for the "It's a Trap! Award" as I would like to nominate The Prince of Darkness for his work with OOXML 'community acceptance.'
    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The Prince of Darkness
      Hang on, how did Bob Novak get involved in this?
  • Balmer and Gates (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Saturday April 26, 2008 @01:32PM (#23208204) Homepage
    I nominate Steve Balmer and Bill Gates, in the last month they have done more to promote the concept of alternative operating systems than anyone else in the market. Bill by saying the next Windows is out next year and Steve by saying that Vista is a work in progress. Without the sterling work of these two men in hampering Microsoft it would be much harder for Open Source software in the corporate world.
  • No discussion... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mebrahim ( 1247876 ) on Saturday April 26, 2008 @01:37PM (#23208238) Homepage
    I vote for Vista.
  • Mark Shuttleworth (Score:4, Insightful)

    by k33l0r ( 808028 ) on Saturday April 26, 2008 @01:47PM (#23208282) Homepage Journal
    I nominate Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu fame. Ubuntu has done more to promote a desktop Linux than any other distro before.
    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by Enderandrew ( 866215 )
      For PR or actual software?

      I loathe Ubuntu, and most everything about it. However, he does a good job promoting his product, even if the product itself isn't very good.
      • The PR, hence "promotion". But I'm not sure why you would loathe a distro, what's your issue with ubuntu?
        • Re:Mark Shuttleworth (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Enderandrew ( 866215 ) <enderandrew@gmSTRAWail.com minus berry> on Saturday April 26, 2008 @03:48PM (#23208860) Homepage Journal
          I'm all about Gentoo myself, but my wife decided to give Linux a go so we tried several distros. We tried Kubuntu on her laptop with 7.10 I believe.

          Out of the box there were no codecs and all that, which I wasn't shocked by, but I was routinely assaulted on the forums and chat room for even asking about them. How dare you install non-free software! Convert your 20 gig library of mp3's to ogg!

          She had an ATI Card in her laptop, and I wanted to show her compiz. There isn't a free driver that provides 3D acceleration for her card. The instructions I found via Google said to use a restricted modules manager that didn't exist. I found later you can install it seperately, but that module doesn't ship with the distro. Again, I was routinely assaulted for even asking how to install the ATI driver. The traditional install methods work on every other distro, but fail on *buntu. I got it working after pulling out much hair.

          Next, several software programs that shipped by default with the distro were just broken. Kicker and Konqui crashed all the time. I submitted bug reports and was informed I either didn't know how to use the apps (clearly, I don't know how to use kicker, though I have zero issues with in on Gentoo) or that my problem was using a x86_64 build which weren't "officially" supported, despite the fact that they are official releases, and you can get LTS support for x86_64 releases. I wonder what Mark would say about his mods saying x86_64 isn't official.

          To boot, we never got wireless working on her laptop, not once. I wanted to install madwifi, and try a different kernel. I downloaded the mm source, but there were no build tools. I was searching for the right packages, and again was assualted for asking. "You should never attempt to compile anything! That is only for devs! Never touch the kernel! What are you thinking!" There was no nice meta-package I found that pulled in a complete toolchain. But I got all the packages I needed eventually. But when I booted my -mm kernel, it wouldn't load synaptics, ati driver, etc. because I lacked a restricted modules package specific for my kernel uname. I googled and asked repeatedly, and no one would help with how to produce this package myself.

          I installed Suse, and wireless worked out of the box. I tried a few distros, and my wife eventually settled on Sabayon, where everything worked out of the box.

          However, not only did Kubuntu have horrible packages that were broken, it had by far the worse default KDE desktop I saw. It also lacked the standard features that Mark was currently pimping for the Ubuntu release, because they are quite slow trying to work those features in Kubuntu.

          Fedora, Suse and all the other big boys have custom theming for both their Gnome and KDE desktops. Suse has been providing some great patches, backporting stuff from KDE 4.1 trunk, etc.

          Ubuntu says, this is what you're getting. Don't think about installing anything non-free, don't mess with packages, don't touch the kernel, live with the default, and like it!

          I actually had a mod suggest to me that I should divorce my wife because she bought a laptop that wasn't 100% supported by free drivers. That's a great community.

          However, if you'd like I can really go into some lengthy rants about 1,000 things wrong with Ubuntu.
          • by Anonymous Coward
            You are a whiny, lazy, lying, sack of shit. That's a nice story you came up with to bash the new kid on the block though. Why are some people so offended by Ubuntu?
            • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

              by Enderandrew ( 866215 )
              So says anonymous coward.

              Almost everything in my post is easily verifiable.

              For the record, I don't take kindly to being called a liar by someone who is not only full of shit themselves, but also unwilling to post under their own name.
          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            While i agree ubuntu dont do much for kubuntu, kubuntu isnt that bad.
            Apart from trying kde4 when it was experimental ive never come across a broken package
            Installing mp3 support was simply sudo apt-get install kubuntu-restricted-something, which google answered didnt even have to ask.
            Restricted-manager-kde also solved all my wifi/ati problems without a problem. I then went on to google and install the latest ATI drivers without any problems

            The comunity are usually quite helpful, ofc there's always somebody
          • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

            by QCompson ( 675963 )

            I actually had a mod suggest to me that I should divorce my wife because she bought a laptop that wasn't 100% supported by free drivers. That's a great community.
            Does your sarcasm detector run on Kubuntu too? Because it's broken.
            • No, it was quite a back and forth. He said something like, "it serves you right for not buying hardware that has 100% free drivers."

              I said, "well, I try to buy hardware with Linux in mind, but my wife bought this laptop before she decided to switch to Linux."

              He told me I was stupid for marrying her if she didn't know what to buy, and that I should divorce her.
              • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

                by bobtodd ( 189451 )
                Links or it didn't happen.
                • It was a series of PM's on the Ubuntu forums.

                  I'm going to log into the Ubuntu and Kubuntu forums and see what I can find from messages posted publicly, but I ran into crap in the irc channels, and both forums repeatedly. I reported one post for flaming, and that is when a mod started ripping into me repeatedly through a PM.

                  I'm the only enderandrew on the internet, and any Google search will show the countless forums I'm registered on. I never run into problems with moderators. I'm not full of shit, and I
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      either that or your linux is ready? Sure he did alot, but the biggest 2 projects causing linux adoptions have to be
      firefox & compiz

      mark, may have made a great distro that got alot of limelight, but the fast is that he just happens to have jumped on board at a very good time, ubuntu has done very little that isnt just tying loose ends together, very little high quality coding.

      Ubuntu may be many things but it has not "demonstrated exceptional creativity, and collaboration in the development of open sourc
      • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        ubuntu has done very little that isnt just tying loose ends together
        Tying the loose ends together is one of the most important parts. It's also the part that is the hardest to get open source programmers to do because there's a large disconnect between what's easy for them and what's easy for the average user.
      • by inflex ( 123318 )

        ...ubuntu has done very little that isnt just tying loose ends together, very little high quality coding.

        And that's precisely the stuff that most coders don't bother to finish off. A lot of open-source projects are written to scratch an itch and when that 'itch' is scratched sufficiently the coder generally stops. The trouble is, the point where the itch stops and the point where software is usable to a more widespread audience (beyond people who live/work with similar stuff) is usually not the same. So if all that Ubuntu does is add a bit of spit/polish to bring it up to shine then that's still worth h

  • Nominations (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Enderandrew ( 866215 ) <enderandrew@gmSTRAWail.com minus berry> on Saturday April 26, 2008 @02:04PM (#23208360) Homepage Journal
    Best Kernel Hacker - Andrew Morton (-mm kernel line)
    Best Project Leader - Aaron Sergio (KDE 4)
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by SL Baur ( 19540 )
      Andrew Morton can't be nominated - he's a Google employee. He'd be perfect choice if he were eligible.
    • Best Project Leader - Aaron Sergio (KDE 4)
      Really? Despite the debacle which was the KDE4 release (but not really the release-release)?
      • Why was it a debacle? They said for months upfront that it wouldn't have full feature parity with KDE 3.5.x at the 4.0 mark.

        Did it load? Was it horribly broken?

        Most of the core stuff was there and working fairly well for such a large refactoring. Obviously, tons of bugs have been squashed since the 4.0 release, but any major release of that magnitude will have some bugs, unless you are Google and just leave something in beta for years and years.

        Then you're just in semantics on what you call a release.

        How
        • Then you're just in semantics on what you call a release.

          I'm stuck on semantics on what a release should be called? The various explanations offered by the KDE developers after the fact was pure marketing drivel ("KDE 4.0 is not KDE4" for example). What they released in January I'd be doing a favor by calling a developer release.

          How many lives of code are in the KDE SVN? He designed the concept of Plasma, designed a complete refactoring, did a bunch of coding himself, did a bunch of PR, changed the build system, and largely rebuilt KDE from the ground up. That is no small task given the time frame. The fact that there is a very stable KDE 4 desktop literally a few months after the 4.0 release said they got it mostly right. To top it all off, at the same time he was also developing Mac OS X and Windows ports from the ground up as well.

          Perhaps there was too much on his plate. At the very least he should have cut back on some of the PR and hype leading up to the release.

          Name one other project of that magnitude that pulled off a release like that this year. I'd say that qualifies him for best project manager of the year.

          KDE4 is indeed an impressive project. But it may have been better received, and more ea

          • Then you're just in semantics on what you call a release

            I'm quoting you, quoting me and all, but I wasn't assaulting you specifically. In context, I was saying if you call something a beta for years, rather than ever have a release, then that is just semantics. Google updates their code and services all the time. People keep suggesting that KDE should have called 4.0 something other than a release, but again, it is just semantics.

            Aaron was quite clear, repeatedly on what the release was and wasn't.

            And saying that 4.0 doesn't fully represent everything that 4

            • People keep suggesting that KDE should have called 4.0 something other than a release, but again, it is just semantics.

              It's just semantics until a school or business that isn't privy to the KDE team's reshuffling of release definitions tries to install what is called a final release and discovers that it is still not feature complete and has lots of bugs.

              And saying that 4.0 doesn't fully represent everything that 4 will be isn't drivel. Apparently you didn't use KDE 3.0 or KDE 2.0

              Huh. Seem a tad strange then that there was controversy about KDE4's release, since everyone apparently is on the same page as to what constitutes a .0 final release. I suppose every "final" release is really only intended for early adopters or as a sort of technology p

              • I don't believe a single distro shipped with 4.0 as the default, though I believe Fedora 9 will ship with 4.0.3 and will be the first to use a 4 series as default, which means you had to go out of your way to install KDE 4.

                The KDE 4 website says quite clearly that it hasn't reached full feature parity and isn't ready for everyday use for everyone.

                I'm not sure what isn't clear about that.

                And who said the release was final? They are releasing new versions every three weeks right now. Seems far from final.
                • The KDE 4 website says quite clearly that it hasn't reached full feature parity and isn't ready for everyday use for everyone.

                  Where? http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.0/ [kde.org]

                  From that page: "KDE 4.0 is the innovative Free Software desktop containing lots of applications for every day use as well as for specific purposes."

                  And who said the release was final? They are releasing new versions every three weeks right now. Seems far from final.

                  Well, by that definition, a software release is never final.

                  Also from the release page: "The KDE Community is thrilled to announce the immediate availability of KDE 4.0. This significant release marks both the end of the long and intensive development cycle leading up to KDE 4.0 and the beginning of the KDE 4

  • by niceone ( 992278 ) * on Saturday April 26, 2008 @02:27PM (#23208452) Journal
    What might be more fun would be one for the worst OSS developers - there could be categories for least notice taken of user requirements, best flaming of dumb newbie questions on the support forums, most hostile to new developers joining the team...

    I'm too polite to nominate anyone though.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    As the worst Open Source project ever devised. Ten years and its still beta software. I guess that qualifies it for the Vaporware Award of the decade as well. And its written in Java. (cold sweat covers body)
  • Given this is an open source award, one TLA immediately comes to mind: ESR.

    I nominated Eric S. Raymond for his outreach and community efforts in making open source a well-defined, understood, and established. ESR has been a prominent voice and force in the open source movement, he co-founded the Open Source Initiative, helped with the release of the Mozilla code as open source, and continues to contribute to various open source projects directly including X11, Battle for Wesnoth, Emacs, Fetchmail, Freeciv,
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by chromatic ( 9471 )

      That'd be ironic; ESR's one of the people who organized the previous incarnation of the Open Source Awards, of which I understand some recipients never in fact received their promised awards.

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