MindTouch Names 20 Most Powerful Open-Source Voices of 2010 at OSBC

by Chris Preimesberger

Hurley is chief architect of Open Source Strategy at BMC Software, an old-school company that’s been reborn with new-generation thinking. Here’s an information page on Hurley: http://talk.bmc.com/podcasts/podcast-whurley2.html.

Phipps has been among the most influential open-source spokesmen in the world for more than 20 years, having represented both IBM and Sun Microsystems over that span of time. With the demise of Sun in January 2010, Phipps soon will start a new chapter in his bio.

As the Ubuntu Community manager, Bacon has been instrumental in the growth of the 6-year-old operating system—especially in the enterprise.

Scholz is a longtime Python programmer and open-source/open standards advocate, an ex-Data Portability board member, and co-founder of Comlounge.net.

Hilton is the founder and president of ImageX, which developed Drupal, the popular open-source Web publishing and collaboration platform.

Messina currently serves at Google as an open Web advocate and has been an open-source and open standards advocate for several years. Messina was formerly employed as an open-source advocate at identity company Vidoop; prior to that he was the co-founder of Citizen Agency.

Seokchan (Channy) Yun is one of South Korea’s top tech writers. He has written in columns for ZDNet Korea and his own “Channy’s Blog.” He’s a founder of BarcampSeoul and WebAppsCon, and is Asian editorial adviser of Lift Asia. Channy worked for Daum as a technical evangelist for five years and was CTO of Nine4u for seven years.

Buytaert is the original creator and project lead for the Drupal open-source Web publishing and collaboration platform. Buytaert serves as president of the Drupal Association, a nonprofit organization formed to help Drupal flourish.

Moody is an open-source writer, journalist and blogger who started writing about computers in 1982, the Internet in 1994 and free software in 1995. His history of free software and open source, “Rebel Code,” was published in 2001. “Digital Code of Life,” a book about the genomic software that powers everything alive, and the battle to keep it free, came out in 2004.

Van Rossum is the creator of Python, one of the major programming languages on and off the Web. The Python community refers to him as the BDFL (Benevolent Dictator For Life), a title straight from a Monty Python skit. Currently he works for Google and spends 50 percent of his time on Python.

Schwartz was president and CEO of Sun Microsystems from 2006 until February 2010, when he resigned after the company was acquired by Oracle for $7.4 billion. Previously, he was co-founder of Lighthouse Design and marketing director for Sun’s JavaSoft division. Schwartz has been a tireless open-source advocate for more than 20 years.

Cox is an assistant professor of computer science at Duke University and a recipient of an NSF Career award and an IBM Faculty Award. He received his doctorate from the University of Michigan in 2005. Landon’s current research interests include operating systems, distributed systems and mobile computing.

Torvalds, arguably the world’s most famous computer programmer and also its most famous Finn, is the founder and coordinator of the Linux operating system. Torvalds is now working on the Linux kernel full-time at the Linux Foundation (formerly the Open Source Development Lab), which is based in Beaverton, Ore.

Asay is the new chief operating officer of Canonical, parent company of the Ubuntu Linux operating system. Prior to Canonical, he was general manager of the Americas division and vice president of business development at Alfresco, an open-source applications company. He is the co-founder of the annual Open Source Business Conference (now in its sixth year) and is a regular blogger on open-source topics for Cnet.

De Icaza started the GNOME project in August 1997 with Federico Mena to create a completely free desktop environment and component model for GNU/Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. Earlier, de Icaza had worked on the Midnight Commander file manager, as well as the Linux kernel. He is also the chief administrator for the Mono project, which connects open-source development with Microsoft technology.

Yuksel is a XenSource expert in the IT support business and a longtime Linux developer and contributor. Based in Ankara, Turkey, he is one of the most active open-source authorities in the Middle East.

Schwartz is a two-decade veteran of the software industry and a noted Perl developer. He has co-authored books on the standards: “Programming Perl,” “Learning Perl,” “Learning Perl for Win32 Systems” and “Effective Perl Learning,” and is a regular columnist for WebTechniques, PerformanceComputing, SysAdmin and Linux magazines.

Johnson is one of the world’s leading authorities on Java and J2EE development. He is a best-selling author, experienced consultant and open-source developer, as well as a popular conference speaker. His best-selling “Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development” (2002) was one of the most influential books published on J2EE. The sequel, “J2EE without EJB” (July 2004, with Juergen Hoeller), has proved almost equally significant, establishing a comprehensive vision for lightweight, post-EJB J2EE development.

Roche is an iPhone developer, open-source advocate and CTO of Foodtree.com. She started ByteStyle.tv in 2009, which developed into a general forum for the tech world—including politics, news and food issues. Roche started her first business (Web-based electronic prescription software) in 1999 and sold it in 2002. Since then, she has been a consultant and director of IT for Comcast HQ, started and sold a wireless (900MHz) Internet Service Provider (ISP), and built a lot of Websites.

O’Reilly is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, one of the largest and most successful computer book publishers in the world. The company also publishes online through the O’Reilly Network and hosts conferences on technology topics. O’Reilly is a frequent speaker at conferences and is a longtime activist for open source, open standards and sensible intellectual property laws.