Free software heroes: from Stallman to Google, a list of inspiring individuals

[ Thanks to steve hill for this link. ]

"Richard Stallman.. With rms, I don’t even know where to start. He started the GNU project, which is a rather important part of the GNU/Linux operating system, in 1983 (that’s right: nineteen eighty-three!) and set up the Free Software Foundation in 1985. He wrote the original GNU C compiler—yes, the program used to transform programs from programming language to executable code. He spends most of his time being a political and software activist. If you want to see what dedication is, read his blog and see his beyond-hectic travelling schedule.

"Pamela Jones. Talking about dedication, Pamela Jones is the author of Groklaw, arguably the web site that saved GNU/Linux and free software in general from SCO/Microsoft’s claws. Pamela Jones is a truly outstanding individual. She authored around 1000 articles over the last 3 years—and a lot of them are full-length pieces which resonated loudly in the IT industry as a whole.

"Linus Torvards.. He wrote Linux, the kernel, without which the GNU utilities wound’t have anything to run on. Linus’ kernel was timely, and was released under the GPL (written by Richard Stallman) in 1991. Linux is a very important part of the GNU/Linux project."

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