I enjoyed reading this post at l2admin, celebrating some of the big names in open source development. Of course, we can all argue about names which didn’t make this particular list (personally I think Larry Wall and Guido van Rossum are just two of the important omissions), but what strikes me most – well, except that Mark Shuttleworth is younger than me, which is slightly dispiriting – is how globally representative the list is.
Traditionally the commercial software industry has been mainly associated with the USA, and while of course all those corporations are bursting with international employees on H-1Bs, and have international offices scattered all over, nevertheless the impression that you still get is that the USA drives most of the industry, with a few exceptions. This is of course one of the reasons behind initiatives by other countries to promote their local industries instead, such as China’s Red Flag Linux and the European research funding programme – with mixed results. It’s nice, therefore, to see the range of nationalities called out in lists like this, which reflects the meritocratic and perhaps academic style of the open source field in general.
Of course, a large number of the successful open sourcers end up in the USA eventually anyway, because by and large that’s where the money is – which is what biases where most software originates in the commercial world too of course. 
Still, I take heart at the diversity in this list of luminaries, which definitely reflects the diversity I see in my own open source community. Believe it or not, great stuff does get done outside of the Valley sometimes 
April 16th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
“except that Mark Shuttleworth is younger than me, which is slightly dispiriting”
I can understand that feeling. I was watching TV recently and saw a Congressman who is the same age as me (27) and it made me feel a bit like a loser.
Still, if you consider all of the cool places that Ogre has shown up, it’s already quite a legacy.
I’ve been involved in Ogre projects for automobile companies, medical simulators, training software and games… so I can only imagine the list of projects you’re aware of.
April 17th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Yeah, if I pop my clogs tomorrow I guess I could have done worse than to leave the world with Ogre
April 20th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Man, you guys sound like you are ready to retire … if you are like this now, what the heck are you going to complain about 20 years from now ?
April 20th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Haha – it’s just surprising sometimes, when you’ve been used to being the ‘young upstart wizard’ and then realise you’re not anymore. If you’re not there yet, be prepared for the realisation later
It doesn’t mean we’re ready for retirement, or even complaining. I actually appreciate being a little older & wiser than I was at 25 actually – I have a blog post on that subject forming in my head for sometime later. And I’m certainly not anywhere near done with the world yet – honestly I can’t really imagine ‘retiring’ in a normal sense no matter what age I get to, since I create for fun anyway. But there’s no getting away from the fact that Mark Shuttleworth is not only richer and more successful in the open source field than me, but he’s younger too. Gives you a very slight feeling of having undershot when you see something like that
But hey, I’d better get used to it…