Does money really equal power?

From open source advocates to the lowly programmer or activist not in it for the cash, why are 'free spirits' proving as influential as tech billionaires these days? Tony Hallett investigates…

Besides the number of politicos and public sector-oriented individuals on this year's top 50, it is noticeable that for every billionaire there is someone we might call a 'free spirit', in both the open source and anti-advanced capitalism senses.

Starting as close to the medal positions as possible, Hu Jintao (in at 4) now heads a country of over a billion possible consumers - consumers that the state believes shouldn't be making Western companies rich, or maybe even any commercial company. So we have the real possibility that not only will vendors such as Motorola focus on Linux in China but that China and neighbours Japan and South Korea will get together to come up with a Linux-based alternative to Windows, much to the chagrin of Bill and Steve back across the Pacific.

Meanwhile, if you've read this far, you'll be waiting for a mention of Mr Torvalds himself. The creator of the Linux operating system is in for a fourth year, at his highest position yet - number 5, compared to 21, 10 and 22 over the last three years.

Let's not forget that he's not anti-money. For him, Linux started as an intellectual puzzle, all about a better way of developing software. Of course now thousands of major user organisations, developers and companies such as Dell, HP, IBM and Oracle share at least some of his vision - though it'd be a bit much to call profit-hungry vendors 'free spirits'.

Arguably the open source hero of the year, and a man who could be setting an agenda for municipalities the world over, is Christian Ude. Name doesn't ring a bell? He made it to 20 on the strength of being the mayor of Munich who signed off a move to Linux rather than using Windows. The story has it that Steve Ballmer flew in, offered a low, low, low price for Microsoft's OS and still Ude said Nein. By the way Ballmer, for the first time ever, is languishing in the lower half of the table at 48.

Others stand out. Erich Gamma (31) manages Eclipse, an open source software development project dedicated to providing robust, commercial software. Borland and IBM are among his fans, as are thousands of developers.

And the Sanger Centre's John Sulston actually rises five places to 39, despite time having passed since his great open source work on the Human Genome Project. Again, our experts thought him influential for working on the code that makes us who we are in a collaborative way, and wanting to disseminate findings freely, rather than patenting the building blocks of life, as some of his colleagues in the US advocated.

Patenting what some say should be openly owned by all was a recurring theme. Greg Aharonian (21) has come out against Amazon's one-click ordering process patent and has been described by Wired in the past as "Not so much a loose canon as a carpet bomber".

David Naylor, partner at international law firm Morrison and Foerster and panellist this year, said: "Seeking to affect an [intellectual property] protection system in that way is significant. He's a bit of a white knight, even if he is controversial."

Similarly, while most would say neither free digital entertainment content nor rigidly controlled and over-priced analogue products are the way forward, two names in this year's list fall on the side not stacked with Big Business lawyers. Dmitri Skylarov (29) was famously busted for revealing how Adobe eBook software could be cracked while Fred von Lohmann (15) from the Electronic Frontier Foundation proved popular with the panel for standing up to Hollywood, music biz organisation the RIAA and the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the US.

David Taylor, author and silicon.com columnist, said: "One of the trends of the last 12 months is that we're ending up with law breakers in our own homes."

Broadcaster and fellow panellist Kate Bulkley added: "They're going to have to sue the whole freakin' world."

On a slightly different note, in at 43, is author Naomi Klein, famous for her best-selling anti-globalisation investigation No Logo. Panellist Martin Brampton explained: "I just think we need somebody as a spokesperson for the environmental movement."

Someone who could well have fallen into this category this year but didn't make the list at all is SCO CEO Darl McBride. He has led his company's charge to get credit for what it claims is some of its code turning up in Linux. So far the row has taken the form of a lawsuit brought against IBM, headlines in the media and SCO invoicing some users for Linux roll outs.

However, when asked what happened when his company was served with a request to pay a SCO licence for Linux, panellist Ric Francis, Safeway's CIO, said: "I told them to stick it. At the end of the day it is never going to fly. It's the last dying breath of a company that is never going to make money."

McBride - in the headlines yes, agenda setting no. There is a difference.

And finally consider Steve Jobs, in at 1, in light of free spirits. Richard Allan, LibDem MP and panellist, called tapping open source software for Apple's OS X "a huge decision". It is not the only reason for his surge to the summit but it did matter.