OSI Announces Open Source Awards 162
JohnGrahamCumming writes "There's a story running on ZDNet about how OSI is going to be giving Open Source Awards with cash prizes of up to $10,000. The idea is to create the "Nobel Prizes" of Open Source. Announcement was made yesterday as OSCON with some big names backing the awards (e.g. Sun, OSAF and (interestingly) a major venture capital firm USVP)."
Re:Holy Whackamolly! We've Got Chips! (Score:3, Informative)
For many people on the earth that's a large sum.
Re:Holy Whackamolly! We've Got Chips! (Score:3, Informative)
But really, if one was to write such a super OSS program, wouldn't he be hired by a big corporation and paid at least ten times that amount?
Transmeta isn't exactly a big corporation, and considering that the Sr. VP of Worldwide Sales only makes $262K a year I'm not even sure Linus is making $100K. And that's the big guy, the supreme God of open source software. I'm sure there are lesser mortals in the OSS world making less than $100K.
Re:Is it split? (Score:1, Informative)
The Award Categories (Score:3, Informative)
The Grand Master Award: This award will be given to persons with an outstanding record of contributions to the open-source and Internet cultures. Ideal candidates will have a record not only of technical excellence but of community leadership and service. Along with the recognition as Grand Master, the recipient will receive $10,000 and an invitation to serve as an elector on the collegium that issues the awards.
Merit Awards: These awards will be given four times per year for work on specific open-source or network-service projects. Recipients will be recognized at the annual event and will receive a cash award of $500.
The Special Award - These awards may occasionally be conferred at the Awards Committee's discretion as a way of recognizing praiseworthy projects or conduct not covered by the existing regular categories and experimenting with new categories. Recipients will be recognized at the annual event and will receive a cash award of $1500.
Re:Venture firm (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Is it split? (Score:2, Informative)
The Judges (Score:3, Informative)
Larry Augustin, a venture partner at Azure Capital Partners where he specializes in software, systems, and related IT infrastructure technologies. He currently serves on the boards of directors of VA Software Corporation (as chairman), the Open Source Development Lab, Linux International, and the Free Standards Group. Previously he was conference chairman for LinuxWorld Conference and Expo, and served on the conference advisory board. Augustin has appeared as a regular columnist in Linux Magazine, has written numerous articles, and is the author of "Hardware Design and Simulation in VAL/VHDL," published by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Jim Gettys, a member of HP Labs' Cambridge Research Lab, currently working on making open source systems safe on handheld computers. He helped found the handhelds.org community. In 1984, Gettys started the X Window System that forms the base technology of the Linux and UNIX desktops, on which Gnome and KDE are based. Gettys worked at W3C on loan from Compaq Computer Corporation's Industry Standards and Consortia group from 1995-1999. He is the editor of the HTTP/1.1 specification (now an IETF Draft Standard).
Dr. Marshall Kirk McKusick, author, consultant, and professor on UNIX- and BSD-related subjects. While at the University of California at Berkeley, he implemented the 4.2BSD fast file system and was the research computer scientist at the Berkeley Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG), overseeing the development and release of 4.3BSD and 4.4BSD. He has been a strong advocate for the open-source movement since its inception in the mid 1980s.
Keith Packard, developer of open source software since 1986. Packard has focused on the X Window System since 1987, designing and executing large parts of the current implementation. He is currently employed by HP as a member of the Cambridge Research Laboratory working on pervasive and mobile computing. In 1999, he received a Usenix Lifetime Achievement award for his work on the X Window System.
Eric S. Raymond, observer-participant anthropologist in the Internet hacker culture. His research has helped explain the decentralized open-source model of software development that has proven so effective in the evolution of the Internet. His own software projects include one of the Internet's most widely-used email transport programs. Raymond is the co-founder of the Open Source Awards.
Guido van Rossum, creator of Python, one of the major free scripting languages. He created Python in the early 1990s at the National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science in the Netherlands, and is still actively involved in the development of the language. van Rossum recently accepted a position at Elemental Security, a start-up founded by Dan Farmer.
LinuxFund (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Trust the committee to be impartial? (Score:2, Informative)
Nominations for the awards are going to be from the public and come through me via the OSI web site. I don't have any specific tie to an OSS project (other than my own... POPFile) nor do I favor strongly any OS or language.
The idea behind the committee was to have people who've been around a long time in OSS. The more people like that the merrier.
John.