Who is the most influential person in the open-source community?

[YourSurrogateGod]

Anyone know? Linus seems to be up there, but I'm under the impression that he's not the most respected. Correct me if I'm wrong...

[GreyFox503]

Linus is one of the best speakers IMO. Whenever he answers questions he is calm and gives appropriate responses without inciting a negative reaction.

[az]

There are many:

*Stuart Langridge (lugradio.org) (Ha ha!) Actually, this sort of broadcast is (I think) very motivational. It is refreshing to hear others who take FLOSS as a given.

*The six candidates to be the next Debian Project Leader:

o Matthew Garrett [mjg59@debian.org]
o Andreas Schuldei [andreas@debian.org]
o Angus Lees [gus@debian.org]
o Anthony Town [ajt@debian.org]
o Jonathan Walther [krooger@debian.org]
o Branden Robinson [branden@debian.org]

* As a whole: Debian Women:

http://women.alioth.debian.org/

This group not only promotes women's involvement in Debian, but seeks to actively increase the number of women in IT in general. Very important stuff, when you consider how big that can actually be. Open Source software lends itself better to this kind of endeavour.

* Mark Shuttleworth because he puts his money where his mouth is.

* Matt Zimermann because he is smarter than Jdong,

the list goes on and on...

[drogoh]

Where's the love for RMS and ESR? If you talk about open source at all you have to at least include something for Stallman, even if he is a kooky old hippie.

[endy]

Linus is one of the best speakers IMO. Whenever he answers questions he is calm and gives appropriate responses without inciting a negative reaction.

Heh, I guess you missed his recent comment about Slashdot...


Gaah. I don't tend to bother about slashdot, because quite frankly, the whole _point_ of slashdot is to have this big public wanking session with people getting together and making their own "insightful" comment on any random topic, whether they know anything about it or not.

http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95

[Rotarychainsaw]

Im gonna vote for our own DanielS. I don't know if he a bigshot or not but he's the man!

[YourSurrogateGod]

* Matt Zimermann because he is smarter than Jdong,

the list goes on and on...
Who's Jdong?

[kleeman]

RMS thinks he is and he has done an awful lot for open software (emacs and gcc) and ESR has been a great advocate however my vote goes to Linus. Linux has turned open source into a practical future solution. bsd is a good alternative but not as influential imho.

As to the mdz jdong cleverness "contest", I'm not biting ;-)

[bob_c_b]

Heh, I guess you missed his recent comment about Slashdot...



http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95

That comment was spot on right, /. is still a great place to grab headlines but the discussions are a joke and have been for the last couple years.

I have a lot of positive feelings about Linus, RMS, about 60% of what ESR says/does and I think some folks like Alan Cox got overlooked. There are so many good people trying to help it's hard to pick just one as "the" voice, and I think we need our militant extremist as well.

[KiwiNZ]

The user:)

[manicka]

The user:)
agreed

[poofyhairguy]

Who's Jdong?

Creator of backports project.

[BWF89]

Where's the love for RMS and ESR? If you talk about open source at all you have to at least include something for Stallman, even if he is a kooky old hippie.
Richard Stallman is my hero despite all his liberal views. It seems that no one gives him credit for starting the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Operating System these days. If it wasn't for RMS Open Source / Free Software would never have existed.

Example: I've seen the "Linus Torvalds is my homeboy" tshirts and bumperstickers on a few websites but no "RMS is my homeboy" ones.

[GreyFox503]

You're right, I did miss that comment :)

That was in a fairly informal setting. Whenever a member of the press interviews him or he makes a public statement (not a /. posting) then he is more professional. Unlike, say ESR who replied to MS's job offering with a pretty nasty email.

[YourSurrogateGod]

Creator of backports project.
*lol* I have no idea what that is :) . I think I've finally realized of my cluelessness about the open-source community after starting this thread.

Teach me o' linux geeks :) .

[drizek]

*lol* I have no idea what that is :) . I think I've finally realized of my cluelessness about the open-source community after starting this thread.

Teach me o' linux geeks :) .
thats just where they *port* breezy packages to hoary. if youve followed ubuntuguide, then you should have the backports repository enabled. if not, you should.

[skoal]

Heh, I guess you missed his recent comment about Slashdot...
Was Linus wrong? Hardly, IMO. I stopped reading /. along time ago as well, but I think he nailed it in his analysis, although he seems to enjoy the childish nit picking which goes on there. Please mod Linux +5 Brilliant!

I don't think you can talk about Open source without mentioning Richard Stallman, but for my money, look no further than Keith Packard.

\\//_

[YourSurrogateGod]

thats just where they *port* breezy packages to hoary. if youve followed ubuntuguide, then you should have the backports repository enabled. if not, you should.
I think I'll pick up an O'Reilly book on the linux kernel in order to become better acquainted with the OS.

[YourSurrogateGod]

Heh... just noticed that jdong is an actual member here. Damn :) .

[drizek]

I think I'll pick up an O'Reilly book on the linux kernel in order to become better acquainted with the OS.
backports isnt going to be in any book. its just an ubuntu thing.

Edit: and over the next year or so, i think aseigo will be a pretyt important guy, seeing as how hes going to be heading most of the major changes in KDE.

[YourSurrogateGod]

backports isnt going to be in any book. its just an ubuntu thing.

Edit: and over the next year or so, i think aseigo will be a pretyt important guy, seeing as how hes going to be heading most of the major changes in KDE.
Who?

[drizek]

hes the guy that is going to turn superkaramba, kdesktop and kicker into plasma for KDE 4. Basically this will result in a huge usability/eye candy improvement.

hes also in charge of tenor, which is the KDE version of beagle/winFS/spotlight.

but hes not doing any of this stuff on his own, far from it, hes just the guy in "charge"

[TravisNewman]

Who is the most influential person in the open-source community? You are! By which I mean, all of us. It's not something that you can pin down to one or two or ten people, it's definitely a major group effort.

[poofyhairguy]

and over the next year or so, i think aseigo will be a pretyt important guy, seeing as how hes going to be heading most of the major changes in KDE.

Yep. Plasma looks awesome.

[mfarquhar]

my vote goes to Linus Torvalds