Indian among most Powerful Voices in Open Source
By Pulkit Sharma

The Open Source movement has ensured that quality software is available free to tens of millions of people who cannot afford expensive commercial products.  At a more subtle level, its collaborative approach has resulted in a more unified and connected world. Open Source has made tremendous inroads in India.

MindTouch has published its list of the 50 most powerful voices in Open Source and the list stars an Indian.

MindTouch explains its methodology for selecting the most influential voices in Open Source: “We first set out to determine reach by examining the number of followers and buzz an individual has on sites like Twitter and Google. We then needed to determine how much impact an individual had with their followers and subscribers. We asked questions like: How often were they retweeted? How much buzz is created around their blog posts, tweets, and other messages? How often is the individual referenced in the blogosphere? Were they cited by influential people?”

No. 1 on the list is Tim OReilly.  Tim founded and leads computing publishing group O'Reilly Media.  Tim O’Reilly has always campaigned for open source.  His powerful media group gives him an influential voice to support open source and balanced IP laws.

No. 2 on the list is Linus Torvalds.  Linus is a techie from Finland who is considered the father of the Linux kernel.  He is widely regarded as one of the pillars of the open source movement.

No. 3 on the list is Chris Messina.  Chris currently works with Google as an ‘Open Web Advocate’.

No. 4 on the list is former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz.

No. 28 on the list is the highly regarded Indian open source guru Atul Chitnis. Bangalore-based Atul Chitnis is a driving force of Foss.in and describes himself as “Technologist, businessman, consultant, writer, actor, musician, family man, community catalyst... I have many, many descriptions.”