Nominations are open for the 14th annual Free Software Awards
Award for the Advancement of Free Software
The Free Software Foundation Award for the Advancement of Free Software is presented annually by FSF president Richard Stallman to an individual who has made a great contribution to the progress and development of free software, through activities that accord with the spirit of free software.
Last year, Rob Savoye was recognized with the Award for the Advancement of Free Software for his contributions to compiler and testing tools, and his leadership of the GNU Gnash project, a fully-free replacement for Adobe Flash. Savoye joined a prestigious list of previous winners including John Gilmore, Wietse Venema, Harald Welte, Ted Ts'o, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Alan Cox, Larry Lessig, Guido van Rossum, Brian Paul, Miguel de Icaza and Larry Wall.
Award for Projects of Social Benefit
Nominations are also open for the 2011 Award for Projects of Social Benefit.
This award is presented to the project or team responsible for applying free software, or the ideas of the free software movement, in a project that intentionally and significantly benefits society in other aspects of life.
We look to recognize projects or teams that encourage collaboration to accomplish social tasks. A long-term commitment to one's project (or the potential for a long-term commitment) is crucial to this end.
This award stresses the use of free software in the service of humanity. We have deliberately chosen this broad criterion so that many different areas of activity can be considered. However, one area that is not included is that of free software itself. Projects with a primary goal of promoting or advancing free software are not eligible for this award (we honor those projects with our annual Award for the Advancement of Free Software).
We will consider any project or team that uses free software or its philosophy to address a goal important to society. To qualify, a project must use free software, produce free documentation, or use the idea of free software as defined in the Free Software Definition. Work done commercially is eligible, but we will give this award to the project or team that best utilizes resources for society's greater benefit.
Last year, The Tor Project received this award, in recognition of its work to fight against surveillance inflicted by increasingly restrictive governments and to improve the safety and wellbeing of all Internet citizens.
Previous winners have included the Internet Archive, Creative Commons, Groklaw, the Sahana project, and Wikipedia.
Eligibility
In the case of both awards, previous winners are not eligible for nomination, but renomination of other previous nominees is encouraged. Only individuals are eligible for nomination for the Advancement of Free Software Award (not projects), and only projects can be nominated for the Social Benefit Award (not individuals).
The award committee has not been finalized, but is made up of previous winners, free software activists and FSF president, Richard Stallman.
Please send your nominations to [email protected], on or before Monday, November 7th, 2011. Please submit nominations in the following format:
In the email message subject line, either put the name of the person you are nominating for the Award for Advancement of Free Software, or put the name of the project for the Award for Projects of Social Benefit.
Please include, in the body of your message, an explanation (40 lines or less) of the work done and why you think it is especially important to the advancement of software freedom or how it benefits society, respectively.
Please state, in the body of your message, where to find the materials (e.g., software, manuals, or writing) which your nomination is based on.
Information about the previous awards can be found at http://www.fsf.org/awards. Winners will be recognized at an awards ceremony at the LibrePlanet conference tentatively scheduled for March 2012, in Boston, Massachusetts.