Microsoft chairman and co-founder Bill Gates is the top most influential personality of the past 25 years in the IT industry, at least according to 84 percent of the 473 IT professionals who were polled in a survey conducted by the Computing Technology Industry Association.
Coming in second was Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs, who was mentioned by 73 percent of respondents (who were asked to place votes for multiple people), followed by Michael Dell with 53 percent of the votes. Other personalities in this popularity contest include Linux creator Linus Torvalds, who shared the fourth spot with Google's Sergey Brin and Larry Page - although the latter two have been around in the industry for less than a decade. Interestingly, Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with inventing the World Wide Web, came in near the bottom of the list with 1 percent of the vote.
Check out the full press release to see who rounded out the top ten most influential IT industry personalities of the past quarter-century.