Nobel Peace Prize to Linus Torvalds: A Northwest Nobel option?

[Darryl Moore]

Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 08:32:44PM -0500, Jason Carson wrote:
>> Not to diminish Torvalds's work but what about Richard Stallman as a
>> candidate for a Nobel Peace Prize, he did after all create the GPL and
>> Free Software Foundation and has worked on the tools that form a GNU/Linux
>> system. The notion of a totally free operating system was his idea and
>> that has what has "changed the world".
> 
> Hmm, RMS and peace price.  Not sure those go together.  He has created
> a lot of hostility too.

Several people who did a lot worse than create a little animosity were
recipients of the prize. This should not rule him out.

> 
> A lot of people don't like where the FSF is trying to go (GFDL, GPLv3
> for example).
> 

And a lot of people do like it. The opening keynote at LinuxFest was
very informative regarding GPLv3. Did you see it?

The FSF does a hell of a lot for OSS, and they, with Stallman, where the
ones that got the whole ball rolling.

> Linus makes a lot more sense to me.
> 

Linus is a pragmatist who only uses OS and GPL because it suits his
purpose. His only concern is with Linux. He does not, that I've seen,
concern himself very much with the state of the OS community beyond
that. He has far less vision and is far less ethically motivated than
Stallman.

Between the two of them, Stallman is by far the most deserving.

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