Linus and Richard sharing Nobel price ?

[*g!t5^_)*(H]

Do you think Linus Trovalds and Richard Stallman deserves a shared Nobel price?

Nobel prices are recognized and respected around the world, we all know there's people with money and influences trying to get the price (expending money with global helps and media talking), even if they don't deserve it.

Linus and Richard work and persistence changed the rules of software, and now we can say computers are accessible to everybody (almost).

What do you think? Do they deserve that kind of recognition?

[Giant Speck]

Sure. I declare Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman the winners of the Nobel Prize in... um... chemistry. :P

[amauk]

and it really would be chemistry (the bad, explosive kind) if those 2 were in the same room together

they strongly disagree on certain fundamental FOSS issues

[jacobw.uk]

Would be pretty cool, I think they could easily coexist in the same gnu/place at the gnu/time, I think they get along like old gnu/friends :p

[bufsabre666]

the nobel prize in awesomeness

[ushimitsudoki]

the nobel prize in awesomeness

Yeah that's about right. There are a few Nobel Prize categories:
Physics
Chemistry
Literature
Peace
Physiology or Medicine

As much as I respect and admire both of the fellows, it doesn't really match up.

Stallman did get a "genius grant", and those are pretty prestigious (not like a Nobel Prize, of course, but not too shabby).

[fatality_uk]

No.

[handy]

I nominate them for the Nobel Peace Prize. :lolflag:

Seeing as their ego's really do not get along.

[ajcham]

Not at all - if nothing else their work is not covered by any of the Nobel Prize categories. Maybe, it could be argued that the Riksbank Prize (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences), which is awarded for outstanding contributions to economics, would be appropriate.

Even then, I would say you could only really argue a case for Richard receiving the prize, not Linus. And not yet either - I don't think the philosophy behind Free Software has gained quite the stature it would need to justify such recognition.

[Kvark]

The GNU OS and it's Linux kernel is a great product but not a great scientific breakthrough so it's not Nobel price material.

The GPL would have been a major breakthrough in economics if nobody had shared before then but Stallman didn't invent copyleft or sharing. He just put one very good copyleft license together and Torvalds just used Stallman's license.