Alan Cox Given Lifetime Achievement Award

sebFlyte writes "This year's LinuxWorld awards in London were given out last night, including a lifetime achievement award to sometime maintainer of the Linux kernel and general open-source evangelist Alan Cox. Awards voted for by the user community also went to Ubuntu, for best distro and IBM for best corporate contribution to open source. He also chose to poke fun at the gathered hordes of open source coders saying "I do like all the dot-orgs... They have everything you need in life except soap.""

What are you going to do now?

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Alan Cox: "I'm going to Disneyland!"

Re:What are you going to do now?

[TrekCycling]

That's good. Especially because I'm picturing Alan Cox on "It's a Small World" or being hugged by Goofy. Good call.

Re:Good for Him

[VagaStorm]

What I wonder is: How can someone get a life time award for work on an os that is 15 years old?

Re:Good for Him

[Mercano]

15 human years, yes, but thats over 70 dog years (no offence intended), and its probably four or six computer generations!

Re:Good for Him

[deathy_epl+ccs]

Dude, in Internet time that's like 2 or 3 thousand years! The dude must be a vampire or somethin' to pull it off.

Congratulations!

[parasonic]

Woot! Congratulations! But the real recognition has yet to come.

Re:Congratulations!

[Mr. Underbridge]

Like what, knighthood?

What does he do now?

[Anakron]

...was often considered number two...

But not any more? And who's no.2 now? Andrew Morton?

Re:What does he do now?

[Anonymous Coward]

insert prisoner / austin powers crap here and get +5

Too soon perhaps ?

[moro_666]

usually lifetime achievement awards are given to people that have "faded" and are old and useless

is this some offensive hint to alan ?

anyway, as from my personal experience, he might seem really mean sometimes, but eventually it always turns out that he has good motives to do and say what he does do or say. and did i forget to mention that this dude knows how to code ?

i hope they aren't "carrying him out of the door with an applause", cause i think we still need him, even if he is under the hat of a big red evil company.

Re:Too soon perhaps ?

[Lucractius]

hrm yes hopefuly its not that... but you reminded me of a shoddy little bright red party hat i have lying round somewhere, one of those plastic odd novelty ones covered in gliter, dont know how i wound up with it. but whenever i walk past its steped on and broken self. its hard to not think "Red Hat" then chuckle slightly.

Re:Too soon perhaps ?

[dirtydog]

usually lifetime achievement awards are given to people that have "faded" and are old and useless

If that were the case, surely ESR would have gotten his first.

Re:Too soon perhaps ?

[rodgerd]

This would imply he'd been especially useful in the first place.

Re:Too soon perhaps ?

[indigoid]

he actually has been quite useful. his contributions to The Great Game [nethack.org], for example, are IMHO quite spiffy and appropriate for the game. the tourist character class, for example

Re:Too soon perhaps ?

[jizmonkey]

This would imply he'd been especially useful in the first place.

Hey now. ESR maintained ncurses for a while. You know not everyone can contribute as usefully at the guy who posts screenshots of new Family Guy episodes on Wikipedia.

Re:Too soon perhaps ?

[man_of_mr_e]

Indeed, though I wouldn't quite put it that way.

Lifetime achievement awards are given to people towards the END of their lifetime, not in the middle of it. The reason is that people still have a lot to contribute in their lifetime, and giving such an award to someone in the middle basically snubs what they may do afterwards.

And, for the record, giving someone TWO lifetime achievement awards for the same thing is pretty stupid, so any work done after such an award will likely go unrecognized, at least by th

Re:Who needs SOAP? We've got CORBA!!!

[temojen]

In fact one of the .orgs [w3.org] does have soap.

Lifestyles of the rich and famous

[totallygeek]

I know their involvement is not based on what they can expect monetarily, but how much fortune have the major open-source players made from their fame? For example, is Linus a wealthy person, upper middle-class, or destitute (I know this is incorrect). People like Stallman: I have only read that he supports himself from giving lectures and making appearances. It is easy to see where folks that have attached to IPOs have made money and re-invested it to be wealthy, but what about everyone else? Does anyone here have some of that information?

Note that I am just overly curious...

Re:Lifestyles of the rich and famous

[totallygeek]

Great. Now thanks to your subject line I'll have that Good Charlotte tune stuck in my head all day. ;)

At first I was thinking Mr Leech. But, as soon as I typed it in, all I could think of was the song too. At least the Macarena has dropped out of my head...

ARGH! Why did you have to say that word?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why oh why did you have to say that word?

ARGH! ARGH! A-ah! A-a-aH, Macarena!

Re:Lifestyles of the rich and famous

[Chris Burke]

I think he's made himself a nice chunk of change, mostly from working at Transmeta*. In his biography "Just for Fun", the author notes that Linus picks him up in a new sports car and they're living in a nice house in northern Cali.

Transmeta was crazily lucrative to work for in the time before the bubble burst. Second hand story, disclaimers apply, but a friend of a friend apparently made about a million bucks off stock options he received as a summer intern. Not unreasonable given the curve their stock w

Re:Lifestyles of the rich and famous

[Otter]

There was a period during the Linux IPO boom where every dope with a Freshmeat project or in the bug report databases was scoring insider shares. (Except for poor Bowie J. Poag!) The big guys all made considerable fortunes, at least on paper. See "Woohoo, I'm So Freaking Rich!!!" by Raymond, E.S.

On the other hand, I've seen Stallman in the supermarket a few times and while he can at least pay for food, he certainly doesn't appear to be living too large. I figured he'd go up to the cashier and demand the source code to the cash register firmware, but no...

Re:Lifestyles of the rich and famous

[tomjen]

Stallman has glaimed in some talks/interviews that he lives like a student, and does so to prevent money from controlling his life

Re:Lifestyles of the rich and famous

[A Numinous Cohort]

On the other hand, he is a recipient of the MacArthur Award (aka The Genius Grant) and the Takeda Award [gnu.org] which means he has a nice chunk of change socked away somewhere.

Re:Lifestyles of the rich and famous

[slashflood]

You can consider Linus as a wealthy, upper middle-class person. "My bedroom has a different zip code than my living room". He made some money from the VA Linux boom (also Red-hat?). He also earned some money at Transmeta.

Soap and...

[GillBates0]

"I do like all the dot-orgs... They have everything you need in life except soap.

...women. Let's not forget women.

Re:Soap and...

[airrage]

....honestly I don't get the .org reference/joke. Can someone elaborate or do you just have to have been there?

Re:Soap and...

[bersl2]

I second this.

Re:Soap and...

[sahrss]

I third this.

Re:Soap and...

[farnz]

Generally, the .org booths at a show like LinuxWorld are for charitable organisations (like the FSF or Debian) instead of companies (like Novell or Red Hat). I suspect it's the "unwashed GNU/hippies" joke, just slightly subtler than usual.

Re:Soap and...

[Manfre]

"I do like all the dot-orgs... They have everything you need in life except soap.
...women. Let's not forget women.

...else you get the hose again!

Re:Soap and...(ever? ever?)

[gosand]

...women. Let's not forget women.

Can you forget something which you have never known?

Forget them?

[Dystopian Rebel]

What do you mean? Geeks are downloading them all the time!

Re:Soap and...

[salparadyse]

I've just come back from the afore mentioned Expo, I've been there for the whole thing (though not the awards dinner). There were women there. And I don't mean the "sprayed on trousers / slightly too tight t-shirt promo types" though they were there too. There were actually quite a few women, of all ages, still out numbered, but much more than last year.

The "he" joking in the summary

[GauteL]

.. is comedian Steve Nallon. The summary makes it look like it is either IBM or Alan Cox cracking the joke about the soap.

Re:The "he" joking in the summary

[MadMidnightBomber]

.. is comedian Steve Nallon. The summary makes it look like it is either IBM or Alan Cox cracking the joke about the soap.

Yep; IBM actually told a joke about a hooker and a Bishop.

The award comes too late

[microbee]

Alan was No.2 a couple of years ago, but now he is not much active (after his MBA). Actually I've not seen many posts from him on LKML.

Re:The award comes too late

[Billly Gates]

What ever happened to him?

I credit Alan for making the kernel stable during the 2.0 days and earlier. After he left Linux has gone downhill in stability. What is he up too?

I assume he was still in school.

Alan, Linux needs you. Come back

Re:The award comes too late

[TheRaven64]

He was at Linux 2005, and still seemed to be employed by Red Hat. He floats around Swansea and is still, I believe, a fairly active member of the LUG. He briefly took an active rôle in the computer society again (he is a life member) much to the detriment of system stability - he may be a competent programmer, but he is not a good sysadmin. Breaking things on Friday and then going home intending to fix them on Monday does not make you popular with people wishing to use the system over the weekend...

Re:The award comes too late

[Ian.Waring]

I was on the same table as Alan Cox last night. He said his one of his MBA projects was talking to small businesses in South Wales about (Desktop) Linux adoption. Said it gave some useful insights... including the need for Sage on Linux (most popular UK SME accounting suite).

Fascinating to listen to on a wide range of subjects :-)

Re:The award comes too late

[tvm662]

The first award of the night went to PayThyme [paythyme.com] an open source payroll package produced by Clockwork Software (my employer). While I know that Sage is more than payroll, it shows that applications for business are available and are being used. Overall I found from both the awards, eg the Allied Irish Bank and talks at the expo, eg Bonhams the auctioneers, that Linux and open source are making great progress into the business world and I find this very encouraging so see.

Tom.

OK, I'm having a little trouble here

[$RANDOMLUSER]

How does an uber-geek get a "Lifetime Achievement Award", which implies having a life??

Re:OK, I'm having a little trouble here

[borawjm]

Well, for many slashdotters, a "Lifetime Achievement" could be getting laid.

Soap?

[M00NIE]

"I do like all the dot-orgs... They have everything you need in life except soap"

Hey, I bathe every month whether I need it or not! The nerve of some people!

Re:Soap?

[TheRaven64]

Nononono! It was a complement! The dot-orgs can't provide soap, because all the soap they had, they use themselves. That's what he meant. Or so I keep telling myself...

I have to do it...

[acid_zebra]

I, for one, welcome our big-bearded slightly eccentric geek overlords.

Congrats Alan!

dot-org joke?

[cerelib]

Would somebody please clarify the final joke about dot-org's.

Re:dot-org joke?

[Anonymous Coward]

He means open source programmers are smelly, especially those that host their product on a .org.

Re:Geek Lifetime Achievement is awarded when....

[deathy_epl+ccs]

That explains why Linus always comes off as too uptight to have really started all this... no beard.

Maybe that's why the whole Linux trademark fiasco is going on... Linus is finally demonstrating to the world that he really doesn't have a beard.

(FWIW, I get regular comments on my beard making it look like I'm one of the ZZTop guys, so I guess that makes me a big geek. heheheh)

Correction

[Plug]

He also chose to poke fun at the gathered hordes of open source coders saying "I do like all the dot-orgs... They have everything you need in life except soap."

Alan Cox didn't say that. The comedian compere did.

no SOAP?

[ignoringReality]

well whoever said it... neither searched sorceforge - http://sourceforge.net/projects/nusoap/ [sourceforge.net]

way to go!

[veganboyjosh]

congratulations, mr cox. i loved repo man. sid and nancy was good as well.

_A_

[cgori]

Cheers _Anarchy_ -- you deserve it...

Judging Awards

[periscope]

Hi folks,

I was one of the judges on the awards last night. I have to say that it was a pretty interesting set of awards we had to give out - and I'm glad that Alan got reconised for the work he has done over the last more than a decade. It was good also to see some of the reacton from those receiving - Mark Shuttleworth was especially cool thanking Debian for the hard work which fueled the Ubuntu project.

Those who were there might have noticed I had them play some Runrig when Alan received his award (since

Congratulations to Alan Cox

[Anonymous Coward]

Alan Cox deserves MULTIPLE lifetime achevement awards.

1. For being insturmental in getting linux to run on 68k Macintoshes.
( actually, this makes him closer to a saint, but I digress..)

2. For producing the first 64-bit port of linux.

3. For maintaining the 64-bit port of linux.

4. For being outspoken about the quality of the programming for the linux kernel. ( Ah ya, another sainthood type thing...)

5. For promoting and proveying software at levels of quality far above normal industry standards.

6. For contributing a large amount of time and energy to the development of the linux kernel.

So...basically, Alan Cox is a god. Id like to nominate him for a MacArthur Grant.

Killmofasta

Re:Congratulations to Alan Cox

[Anthony]

Only trouble is, one has to be at least a US citizen to get one. I agree that he qualifies on all the other criteria.

Note to self, Make a few hundred million and set up an "International Macarthur Grant" equivalent.