On Fri, 2 Jan 2004, Ranga Nathan wrote:
> W3C Head Berners-Lee To Be Knighted
>
> He will be named a knight commander, Order of the British Empire, by
> Queen Elizabeth II for inventing the World Wide Web.
>
> http://www.computerworld.com/newsletter/0,4902,88727,00.html?nlid=PM
>
>
> Perhaps Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds next? Let us hope that some
> real achievers are knighted!
Don't you have to be English to be awarded with a CBE? I thought that we
foreigners were only eligible for a knighthood consolation prize, the KBE
(knighthood of the british empire), as was bestowed on people like Ronald
Reagan & Rudolph Guiliani, as well as lumnaries like Steven Spielberg.
<http://www.britain-info.org/faq/xq/asp/SID.333/qx/showfaq.htm>
I could maybe picture Torvalds being offered a KBE, if only because Linux
has grown so famous noww, but the relative obscurity of GNU and the FSF
leads me to guess that RMS is a less likely candidate. Then again, he won
a MacArthur prize, which is arguably more prestigious anyway...
--
Chris Devers
