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Faces of Open Source

facesofopensource.com

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My thoughts going through this:

"That Weird Al-looking dude is Larry Wall, right?"

It was.

"Who's this guy? He looks like the Architect from The Matrix."

It was Vint Cerf. He is the Architect of the Matrix.

Ohh, I actually believed Vint Cerf had played The Archited on The Matrix... It was actually Helmut Bakaitis.

Strange to see that the authors of the LLVM project, Chris Lattner and Vikram Adve are not present given that LLVM has been used by many large companies (Google, NVIDIA, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, ARM, AMD, etc) and projects like Rust, Julia and Swift.

GNU, GCC, are also free, libre and open-source software (FLOSS) which its very surprising to see the creator and founder Richard Stallman to be missing in this website.

Without him, Linus might have chosen to have kept Linux closed-source.

Nothing I've read on the site suggests that it intends to be exhaustive. You could interpret this paragraph in several ways:

> Faces of Open Source is an on-going photographic documentation of the people behind the open source revolution. The project is comprised of portraits of notable and unsung heroes who dedicate themselves to the creation and advancement of our open source technologies.

It’s super strange cause I contributed a typo fix to the python doc and have yet to get a phone call.

Why does nobody here understand that the faces included aren’t exhaustive? It’s obviously not all faces, and it doesn’t even claim to be just the top faces - it’s ‘notable and unsung’. More practically, it’s probably who made themselves available to be photographed and who would he photographer could get in touch with.

> It’s obviously not all faces, and it doesn’t even claim to be just the top faces - it’s ‘notable and unsung’.

It's a documentation of the people behind the development and advancement of the open source revolution. Sure, that doesn't claim that nobody else plays a role, but it has a hint of that.

> More practically, it’s probably who made themselves available to be photographed and who would he photographer could get in touch with.

Sounds plausible, yeah. The wording makes it sound like more though, but that's probably marketing, because "portraits of some people in the open source movement that I know/was able to meet" sounds less impressive and authoritative than Faces Of Open Source.

But it seems obvious that it can't be exhaustive. It's clearly a photo shoot. And it's on-going (you can subscribe to it).

I'd rather people learn to think critically instead of getting worked up that every exception wasn't enumerated in the tagline.

I don't believe that has anything to do with critical thinking. It's likely just marketing by the creators and they don't mean to claim to judge the value of contributions, but they are declaring that these are the faces behind the open source revolution. Wording matters.

It's an easy thing to get wound up about, and something like this can't help but wander into a whole host of different brushfires that are smoldering or raging at the moment. I'm amazed that this thread hasn't gone more off the rails about diversity in tech or Stallman than it already has.

And another thing I see is that the people there is nearly only persons from America, there are a few european there like Thorvalds and Van Rossum, but other than that it is very american. Though that may just be who the photographer can get. A example of peoiple I at least would like to see to diversify the nationality a bit could be someone like Poul-Henning Kamp.

A very underrated person I'd love to see on there is Roberto Ierusalimschy, from Brazil, who created the Lua programming language, which runs under the hood in more places than one would expect.

Seems to be a one person project by a guy living in the US, so you'll only see pictures of people that have visited some conference in the USA the last 10 years or so.

Guessing it's the same reason they have Eric Schmidt but no ESR, and staff from HRC's presidential campaign.

It's the extent of the photographer's personal network, not a broad selection of people important to open source software.

Odd, ESR was there when I looked.

Mea culpa, I didn't recognize Eric because his face is so small in the picture, really hard to identify (had to scroll and scan a few times to find him on my desktop).

"Without him, Linus might have chosen to have kept Linux closed-source"

[citation needed]

Linux 0.01 was released under a custom license, and IIRC the switch to GPL was under 0.12. The original inspiration was - if there was any beyond "I have a 386, I must write a kernel" - Minix, not GNU. Which was designated a learning OS. And comp.os.minix was where Linus first talked about Linux publicly.

The idea that "without Stallman, he might have kept it closed-source" is somewhat far fetched.

Without Stallman it probably would have chosen BSD style license and not GPL2. We can only speculate how likely or unlikely we would get the tivoization of Linux in that case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization

All I know is what I heard in linus’ debconf talk, but that’s enough to know you’re just guessing.

This is awesome! I love the photography style.

I've been working on something parallel to this myself - interviews with open source maintainers to celebrate their work and aggregate advice for others[1]. It's great to see another example of open source work being highlighted.

Some of the images load a little slowly for me - the images in the modals could be compressed as I notice that the file is often significantly larger than the size it is displayed at on the page.

[1] - https://sourcesort.com

I like the stark, high-contrast style of the photos.

Reminiscent of Avedon's "In the American West". Those were shot on 11x14 large-format film, and the detail on the slightly larger than life print has to be seen up close and personal to be believed.

I'm surprised to see Eric Schmidt on there. I wonder what the criteria was for inclusion.

How many people do you actually recognize?

Personally, only Limor Fried. It's weird, but also interesting, that tech is so faceless.

That is why I like this site. I gives tech a human touch.

I recognized quite a few, since I met several of them at the old Usenix conferences I used to attend. Dennis Ritchie, Eric Allman, Kirk McCusick, Keith Bostic. A few others. I would like to have seen the late Evi Nemeth, but she was known more for System Administration than for open source, I suppose. I also recognized Guido van Rossum and Keith Packard, again from conferences. You really get to match a name to a face at events like that.

That so many people are asking "where is Stallman" on a site called Faces of Open Source makes be wonder how many of RMS' fans actually really listen to him. He loathes the term Open Source and sees it as direct attack on him and his Free Software movement[1].

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....

Reading their about page [1], I'm not convinced they're making a conscious decision to call it open source instead of free software. I don't think the general public (which this is aimed at, it seems) differentiates the two either.

[1] http://www.facesofopensource.com/about/

It's not the site's issue, it's Stallman. Even if they didn't intend for it to be a strict Open Source site, it has Open Source in the name which Stallman wouldn't participate in. The same way Stallman won't participate in (at least at the time of writing this comment) shows or conferences that only use Linux in the name and not GNU/Linux. For example he won't go to something like Ohio LinuxFest and the Linux Action Show had to rename itself the GNU/Linux Action Show to get him to come on. For some people the work of changing the name is worth it, for others it's not worth the hassle.

OSDEM conference even renamed itself on request of Stallman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSDEM#cite_ref-3

> Yet much of this software is “open source” — a technology commons that can be freely used and contributed to by anyone, but at the same time, is controlled by no one person or corporation.

That's pretty much the definition of free software; so yeah... Weird choices.

No it isn't. Free software is about specific software freedoms originally defined by the FSF which overlap, but are not quite accurately captured by that statement. So yeah, Stallman would object because he's all about such fine distinctions.

If I recall correctly there is only one or two licenses among hundreds that aren't both recognized by the FSF and the OSI. The differences are largely ideological, not technical/legal. I'm a fan of Open Source but my main side project is under GPL v2.

Doesn’t really matter if he hates it, they are not mutually exclusive, and the free software movement and the gnu project have contributed greatly to open source software in general.

It does matter because he would have to agree to participate and to sit down with the person who runs the site, Peter Adams, and let Peter take his picture(s).

Linux is Free Software though. By this logic, Linus Torvalds shouldn't be on the page either.

Faces of Open Source is ran by a photographer named Peter Adams. Peter coordinates with the subject of his photos (for example Linus Torvalds) and asks if they want to be a part of his photo project. Since Linus Torvalds doesn't mind the term Open Source he is happy to participate in this project. Since Richard Stallman does not like the term Open Source he would or has more than likely declined to be a part of this project.

Someone should make a "Faces of Free Software" that subtly photoshops Stallman into every single image on that site. (Using Gimp of course.)

Sara Chipps is on there. I only know her from her Stack Overflow drama. I am not sure about what she is doing on this website with Ken Thompson or Larry Wall. I guess I am not aware of her revolutionary side.

Yeah, some of the people they decided to include devalue the whole list ...

I was super out of the loop on the drama so I looked it up. Oh boy...

Response - https://dearstackexchange.com/ HN thread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21176712

Yeah, almost every long-time member of Stack Exchange is sick of all the drama that Sara has caused. It's a huge mess.

It's all about "inclusivity". (Unless you're a woman acting in good faith who happens to be active on "Mi Yodeya". Then it's about pronouns and forced speech.)

So many of these people I knew by name but had no idea what they looked like or at best hadn't seen a photo of them in 20+ years (which is effectively the same thing).

As a photographer, it's always nice to see black&white photos. They have a power and charm that is so different from color.

Positives about this: A good mix of people in terms of gender and what they have contributed.

Why would the gender even be relevant?

So all potential future open-source contributors feel "I can be part of this" rather than excluded.

I just wish there were more women who were actual open-source programmers rather than journalists, executives or advocates. People like Margo Seltzer (BerkeleyDB) or Lynne Jolitz (386BSD).

Is there any evidence that showing pictures of women actually makes a difference with this?

Anecdotally, yes. When I was younger, seeing women in tech roles made it feel like an option for me.

I'd be very surprised to see evidence to the contrary, as it's just an obvious fact of life that people generally feel less confident about entering a community that lacks anyone else like them. Have you never felt intimidated/uneasy when entering a group situation in which every other person was a particular race/gender/age group to which you don't belong?

Not that I can think of, but then I don't really define myself by my gender or race or really give much time to identity politics in general.

Not defining oneself by gender or race does not invalidate the hypothesized effect: that one may feel excluded if they don't see anyone like them doing it. There is no denying that the fact of being a man or woman influences a lot of our lives and how people treat us.

May I posit this is because you are rarely in situations where you feel your gender is pronounced? If you were, say, a man applying for a job as a general hospital nurse, you would feel this, or as a heterosexual hairstylist applying for a salon job. There are stereotypes you would feel pressure to justify why you, who do not fit the stereotype, would be a beneficial person to hire, in such cases.

I felt uneasy in my college electives composed almost entirely of women.

I imagine I would have loved that.

> Have you never felt intimidated/uneasy when entering a group situation in which every other person was a particular race/gender/age group to which you don't belong?

Even if you have, that's problematic on your part. Just because people look differently doesn't mean they won't be welcoming towards you, that's tribalism at it's finest and needs to stop.

The ones that do feel intimidated/uneasy about it need to work on their own perception of other people and not the other way around. You don't change the mindset of a group because there isn't any, it only exists on paper in your gender studies textbooks. Humans are individuals and everyone has their own mindset regardless of genitalia, skin color, age etc. Thinking otherwise is both disrespectful and racist/sexist/agist.

Yes. There is plenty of research on the psychological effects of representation. The effects are very real.

I was greatly pleased to see attention to gender was paid. I was worried when I clicked on this that women might be underrepresented - we are often invisible, for many reasons. It's a great site that I'll be happy to share as a mentor.

> we are often invisible, for many reasons

Like? I'd really like to know the reasons. Also, who is "we"? Biological women? Also please explain, as I initially asked, why it matters what gender you are. (Or race, hair or eye color you have, height or whatever attributes you think is "invisible" to others and hence underrepresented)

Take a really simple example. Say you are looking for a new pair of trousers. You go to the high street and you see lots of mannequins in the window that are the opposite (heterosexual-stereotype gender of you). You read in an ad that this shop also sells clothes for your body type— but how comfortable are you going in, as opposed to the window that has a variation of mannequins and outfits in the window? And that's how we encourage everyone to get involved, by letting them know there is no clique or stereotype they need to worry about being part of. We should work hard at this, especially for something as critical as technology, and its design and communication.

Not sure where you live, but where I do mannequins only come in one shape: The perfect shape. Judging by the people I see there it doesn't discourage anyone. Why would it? It's just a sample. Neither I think anyone needed an ad to tell them that they can actually shop and find something there. However if you get influenced by the shape of a mannequin that much, the problem is probably a different one within yourself.

From personal experience I know a women-only domain does not keep men from joining it. I've seen it the other way around with friends as well, unless you project something into that and start to think it would be a "problem" or discourage someone or something else. Would you join an office where everyone is a redhead but you aren't? Sure you would. I mean, why not? What would discourage you? So how is it different for a man to join an office for example with only women? Or just replace the attributes which whatever you think fits. If you care about other people's gender, race, hair color, height or number or functioning body parts (read as: "handicapped") much ... well, then there will always be an underrepresentation of some sort.

If the distribution of gender discourages you from joining a community or domain maybe you should stop putting people and yourself into categories of body attributes. To me it's the same pair of shoes as saying "too many/few black people". Ok, so they are "different" from other people in a way that would discourage someone? Interesting thought in 2019 for a pre 20th century concept.

What you are asking for is the ideal world scenario, the one we hope to get to as we teach our children exactly what you say here. But the reality is, advertising and patriarchal forces among other things have caused us to live in a gender unbalanced society. We need time and effort and to work together to acknowledge there are problems, then we'll get there.

Putting people into categories based on physical attributes like gender, race or physical abilities and putting artificial quotas on them is far from "acknowledging the problem". It's part of the problem. That's what gave us a "gender unbalanced society" in the first place. See every person as the individual they are, not as part of a group with a certain attribute. Then we'll get there.

We're completely agreeing! We are in an unbalanced society. So I'm with you, to work together to move onwards. That means not pretending that things aren't messed up, as a first step. Feminism has done a huge amount of work for this, as has post-capitalist and post-colonialism theory. One of my favourite theorists right now is Rosi Braidotti if you are interested, see for example the introduction on her here: https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/philosophy/home/thinking_ou...

I actually thought about this while I was scrolling. I have the impression that women are over-represented, just for the sake of being politically correct.

According to Wikipedia:

A 2002 survey of 2,784 open-source-software developers found that 1.1% of them were women.[3] A 2013 survey of 2,183 open-source contributors found that 81.4% were men and 10.4% were women.[4] This survey included both software contributors and non-software contributors and women were much more likely to be non-software contributors.[5] A 2017 survey of 5,500 contributors to projects on GitHub found that 95% of contributors were men and 3% were women.[6]

Is it not missing Eric S. Raymond?

EDIT : Yes, he is there - just didn't recognise him.

http://www.facesofopensource.com/eric-raymond/

There he is! I just didn't recognize him. Thanks for pointing him out. I was feeling quite aggrieved on his behalf there!

I know there's a ton of "where is X?" going on - but one that I would like to see on here is John Resig, jQuery is still practically _everywhere_.

It's an interesting glimpse into the sphere, highlights different people and different achievements, shows that not all contributions have to be code to help OSS, and due to the stylised nature is obviously non-exhaustive for practical reasons.

It adds a touch of humanity to technology that is often lost.

Of course, as a large percentage of the comments here show, we must criticise and tear-down everything...

This must be old. Guido hasn't been BDFL for a while now. And the achievement gap is very wide between people on the list. You have inventors of the internet and several dominant programming languages alongside some "advocates" nobody has ever heard of.

The point of this website is diversity.

I'm not sure where you're getting that from — it isn't mentioned on the about page[1].

I suspect you've made that assumption because they happen to be diverse, and the stereotype is that computing itself tends not to be. However, I think that is exaggerated, and projects such as this one aim to redress the balance.

But I don't think that's the primary aim at all — the primary aim is to exhibit photographs of people involved in open source, in an attempt to raise their profile.

> The project is comprised of portraits of notable and unsung heroes who dedicate themselves to the creation and advancement of our open source technologies.

[1] http://www.facesofopensource.com/about/

>I'm not sure where you're getting that from — it isn't mentioned on the about page[1].

Obviously. They want to pretend the diversity portrayed in that website is normal.

>I suspect you've made that assumption because they happen to be diverse, and the stereotype is that computing itself tends not to be. However, I think that is exaggerated, and projects such as this one aim to redress the balance.

Let's agree to disagree then.

I was expecting to see Matz^ there but ...

^ Yukihiro Matsumoto - creator of the Ruby Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukihiro_Matsumoto

As was pointed out in some other comment, this list seems to be heavily focused on north-america. I'd also love to see Roberto Ierusalimschy on the list, but he's not on it either.

Wish it was no-pictures as a rule

Why is Richard Stallman's photo not present?

Stallman isn't a face of open source, as he frequently claimed so himself. He is a face of free software[1].

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....

I still think open source is a subset of free software, and Stallman deserves a lot of that credit.

Agreed, Linus is at the top and his Kernel uses Stallman's license.

Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen's license, or at least the license they started. It's all of our license now, I'd think.

It's the other way around, "Free Software" is a subset of open source

Depends on how you set up your space. :)

EDIT: I was mistaken about BSD not being considered Free Software, rmusial below explains the situation much better. Better examples of the difference are given in the link he provides.

Where are you getting that the BSD license isn't Free Software?

Look at https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#ISC

"This license is sometimes also known as the OpenBSD License. It is a free software license"

You can also find the "BSD" licenses on there but they are frowned on because BSD license (to Stallman) is an ambiguous term.

The Free Software Definition gives you the 4 freedoms[1]:

"The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0). The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2). The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this."

Since the BSD, ISC, MIT, X11 licenses all give you the 4 freedoms, they are, by the FSF's definition a Free Software License. The GPL is also by the FSF's definition a Free Software License.

Since the BSD, ISC, MIT, and X11 all meet the Open Source Definition[2] they are Open Source licenses according to the OSI. Since the GPL also meets the Open Source definition, the OSI consider it an Open Source license.

If you read https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.... Stallman states that Free Software doesn't have to do with copyleft vs permissive: "Another misunderstanding of “open source” is the idea that it means “not using the GNU GPL.” This tends to accompany another misunderstanding that “free software” means “GPL-covered software.” These are both mistaken, since the GNU GPL qualifies as an open source license and most of the open source licenses qualify as free software licenses. There are many free software licenses aside from the GNU GPL."

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html [2] https://opensource.org/osd-annotated

Perhaps Stallman wouldn’t want to be part of a project with this name.

Faces of Open Source, seems like the key bit to answer why.

And, as should be obvious, it's not an exhaustive gallery of faces of people involved in Open Source.

The number one face of free software, the one who spawned the creation of a whole open source UNIX OS is not there, it's really amusing how some decision like this could be made.

If I can extrapolate from his behaviour correctly, Stallman would refuse to have his face willingly associated with the term "open source", even if it cost him his photo on this webpage.

I think we all know why Hans Reiser isn't there.

He's on the other website, Mugshots of open source

His filesystem was revolutionary and open source and should be mentioned in there - in fact I'd still go to him if I needed a filesystem. I would not go soliciting marriage advice though :(

More seriously, I think it's wrong to sanitise technological and scientific history when afterwards it's decided that someone isn't a good person. Footnote to that effect; sure. Leaving them conspicuously absent, less so.

edit: though, as the photographer is seemingly taking the portraits himself, I can imagine some devs are easier to get to than others.

He's been unpersoned.

From the "about" page, this seems to be a one person project, where the photographer meets with the "face" to shoot the portray. While he may not have wanted to add rms to the gallery, the reverse can also be true: it is well possible that he contacted rms who refused (that would match with the guy's personality!)

And what happened to comrade Trotsky?

I heard he got axed while he was on a business trip to Mexico.

I like Stallman and I think every software developer owes him credit. But no way he wouldn't include a manifesto about why open source isn't enough.

a bit sad to see that notoriously "free software" people like Bradley Kuhn and Karen Sadler have agreed to appear here.

Perhaps they are less doctrinaire than RMS.

Bradley Kuhn is no longer associated with the FSF anyway [1]. That doesn't mean that he doesn't care about free software anymore. I just thought it was interesting that you mentioned him specifically.

[1] http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html

No idea why there is duplicates of same people but with different photos

Missing Lennart Poettering.

Missing Theo de Raadt as well.

Where is Ian Murdock?

Faces of Open Source seems to be a one person project (Peter Adams) who is a photographer and personally takes the picture of each subject. Since Ian has passed away I don't know how they would be able to be included. Also the site obviously isn't exhaustive since there there are thousands of people in Open Source and is always a work in progress being updated.

Why is it necessary to know what a person _looks_ like in order to value his/her/their contribution to open source? I think we should be beyond physical appearance.

I find seeing their picture helps thinking of them as real (living) persons, instead of just some abstract named entity.

I agree. However, if you're seriously asking that, perhaps you haven't been paying much attention to the political zeitgeist

My thanks to all of them. And the ones who will follow.

Two weeks ago on Saturday morning I was driving my son to his soccer game through Medford MA, when in one of the bus stops I saw Richard Stallman waiting for the bus.

I told my wife, that's Richard! and I stopped right in the middle of the street and jumped out of the car. I ran toward him and hugged him, and told him to take care of himself and be strong. He didn't say a word.

I feel bad for the man, he looked a bit frail, and mind absent.

I can't believe history is being rewritten right in front of my eyes, the man that started it all is being forgotten. Open Source is just a catchy marketing phrase for "free software"

"Open Source is just a catchy marketing phrase for "free software" "

Nope. Even RMS even insist it is not. Main difference is, free software usually enforces "copyleft".

And open source not.

If you read https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.... Stallman states that Free Software doesn't have to do with copyleft vs permissive:

"Another misunderstanding of “open source” is the idea that it means “not using the GNU GPL.” This tends to accompany another misunderstanding that “free software” means “GPL-covered software.” These are both mistaken, since the GNU GPL qualifies as an open source license and most of the open source licenses qualify as free software licenses. There are many free software licenses aside from the GNU GPL."

The Open Source Initiative sees the GPL as Open Source, and the Free Software Foundation sees the ISC (OpenBSD license) as Free Software. Neither group's definition depends on if it is copyleft of permissive.

The main difference between Free Software and Open Software is what aspect of the software they focus on. Free Software is more on the freedom while Open Source is more on the development method. They still value the other aspects, just not as strongly.

He didn't say a word.

Maybe because you stopped in the middle of the street and jumped out of your car and then accosted him?

Can anyone make sense of why some people have two versions of pictures, one close up of their bust, the other of most of their full body; while others only have a single image? It seems rather arbitrary if it's intentional at all.

> Linus Torvalds invented the Linux operating system which is used to run the vast majority of computer servers connected to the Internet

Uhm, no. It's the Linux kernel, used by the GNU/Linux operating system. I'm surprised that this website got something so simple wrong.

The Linux kernel is one part of what we know as the GNU/Linux OS

Apart from the kernel, virtually everything else in the core OS was written by volunteers of the GNU project, and they deserve recognition for the same

Furthermore, calling Linus Torvalds the "inventor" of the OS in question is factually incorrect. The GNU OS was in development long before they decided to incorporate the Linux kernel.

> "Stormy Peters is an open source advocate and evangelist. Peters founded the Open Source Program Office at Hewlett Packard and has since held senior positions at several open source related organizations including the GNOME Foundation, Mozilla, Cloud Foundry Foundation, and Red Hat."

And just like that, "advocating and evangelizing" is apparently all it takes. Can also call it what it often actually is - virtue signaling - but that's not very popular with the kids these days.

She's the Director of the Open Source Programs Office at Microsoft, used to be Executive Director of the Gnome Foundation, and used to be software engineer on the Hewlett-Packard Unix development team.

While most OS folks seem to see PR and management roles as support functions, I think it's good to show some appreciation for people in those roles. They help get some funding in and grow the community. Nothing wrong with that, IMHO.

And comments like this are why people believe they can't contribute to FOSS if they're not developers.

1. Broken on Firefox on Android, text unscrollable.

2. Where the F is Stallman?

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