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Linus Torvalds Leads Over Alan Turing, Tim Berners-Lee, Dennis Ritchie, and RMS

Linus Torvalds Leads Over Alan Turing, Tim Berners-Lee, Dennis Ritchie, and RMS
By Jeremy Geelan
Article Rating:
December 12, 2004 12:00 AM EST
Reads:
 12,683
Related Links:
  • The i-Technology Right Stuff: Searching for the Twenty Top Software People in the World
  • Sung and Unsung i-Technology Heroes
  • Wanted: 19 More of the Top Software People in the World

    It began, as these things often do, as a chance remark, in a blog. Now it has grown to a Web-wide search for the best software people alive and dead. The best ever.

    The tiny acorn was born when Tim Bray in his popular Ongoing blog described Adam Bosworth - of Quattro Pro, Microsoft Access, IE4, then BEA and now Google fame - as "probably one of the top 20 software people in the world."

    The search for the remaining 19 began, and resulted in a list of forty nominees that are now being discussed and voted on by anyone interested in i-Technology and its software development pioneers.

    Currently the leading ten - as of today (Sunday) - are as follows (but it is changing by the hour as votes come in):

    1. Linus Torvalds: "Benevolent dictator" of the Linux kernel
    2. Alan Turing: Mathematician; author of the 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence"
    3. Richard Stallman: Free software movement's leading figure; founder of the GNU Project
    4. Dennis Ritchie: Creator of C and Coinventor of Unix
    5. Tim Berners-Lee: "Father of the World Wide Web" and expectant father of the Semantic Web
    6. Ken Thompson: Coinventor of Unix
    7. Bjarne Stroustrup: The designer and original implementor of C++
    8. Guido van Rossum: Author of the Python programming language
    9. Bill Joy: Cofounder and former chief scientist of Sun; main author of Berkeley Unix
    10. Brian Kernighan: One of the creators of the AWK and AMPL languages

    Related Links:

  • The i-Technology Right Stuff: Searching for the Twenty Top Software People in the World
  • Sung and Unsung i-Technology Heroes
  • Wanted: 19 More of the Top Software People in the World

    • Published December 12, 2004 – Reads 12,683
    Copyright © 2004 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
    Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.

    More Stories By Jeremy Geelan

    Jeremy Geelan is Sr. Vice-President of SYS-CON Media & Events. He is Conference Chair of the all-new International Cloud Computing Expo series, of the International Virtualization Expo series, of AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo series, and of the long-running SOAWorld Conference & Expo series. He's founder of Cloud Computing Journal, Web 2.0 Journal, AJAX & RIA Journal and other leading SYS-CON titles. From 2000-6, as first editorial director and then group publisher of SYS-CON Media, he was responsible for the development of all new titles and i-Technology portals for the firm, and regularly represents SYS-CON at conferences and trade shows, speaking to technology audiences both in North America and overseas. He is executive producer and presenter of "Power Panels with Jeremy Geelan" on SYS-CON.TV.

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    Most Recent Comments
    Expand This Please 12/11/04 05:05:27 PM EST

    Will there be a chance to expand this one day to some kind of Top 100? The search for 20 is clearly proving too restrictive and the many suggestions here are brilliant - maybe a Mk 2 version of this poll can be created?
    Undf65 12/11/04 04:51:31 PM EST

    I'm not sure what's the best part, the discussion about who's missing, or the splendid backup pages illustrating each nominee's claim to be in the top twenty. This is a great resource, keep it up!

    If Linus wins, that'll be the icing on the cake - but the oppositon is very, very, VERY tough.