Yes, I have to agree with Grant, the list of the "most influential people in Open Source" is perplexing, at the very least, containing names like Steve Balmer, Scott Mcnealy, and Mårten Gustaf Mickos, while missing the blindingly obvious names like Linus Torvalds, Brian Behlendorf, Michael Widenius, and either Larry Wall or Rasmus Lerdorf (you've heard of LAMP, right?) as well as folks like Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond. These folks are *still* the driving forces behind the Free Software and Open Source movements, all these years later.
But, also, as Grant notes, the most influential people in in Open Source are folks like Dries (it's VERY cool that he's on the list) and Matt Mullenweg and Owen Winkler and Paul Querna, and any of a zillion other people I could mention, who do the actual day-to-day coding of the projects that really matter, in the sense that hundreds and thousands of websites use them every day to power their businesses and our economy.
Calling a bunch of CEOs the most influential people in Open Source profoundly misses the entire point of Open Source.
Well the title of the article is very misleading because what they REALLY asked for was the most influential executives.
But Steve Balmer? Really?
The man who currently runs a company who's philosophy seems to be "We can do it better by ourselves."
What's open source about that type of philosophy?
You forget who was surveyed: open source business executives. Had the question been asked of open-source developers, I'm sure you'd get a list like you name above. Just my $.02.
Yes, this was at least in part my point. Asking CEOs this question is somewhat like asking a bunch of teenagers who were the most influential musicians of the 20th century.
I'm flattered, but I certainly don't feel I belong in that list. Still, I can think of 50 people that do, and the intersection of my list and the list on that site is possibly 1 or 2.
I'm curious what would happen if well-known open source developers were polled about the most influential CEOs in open source.