Submit your nominations for the 2008 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 a person 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, Harald Welte was awarded the Award for the Advancement of Free Software in recognition for his contributions to the Linux kernel and the OpenMoko mobile platform project, and his community leadership in safeguarding the freedom of free software users by successfully enforcing the GNU General Public License through the gpl-violations.org project. Welte joined a prestigious list of previous winners including 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 2008 Award for Projects of Social Benefit. The Social Benefit award recognizes a project that intentionally and significantly benefits society through collaboration to accomplish an important social task.

The previous winners of the Award for Projects of Social Benefit were Groklaw, in 2007, Sahana project in 2006, and Wikipedia, in 2005.

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 2008 award committee has not been finalized, but the 2007 award committee was composed of: Peter H. Salus (Chair), Raj Mathur, Hong Feng, Lawrence Lessig, Andrew Tridgell, Jonas Oberg, Verner Vinge, Richard Stallman, Alan Cox, Suresh Ramasubramanian and Fernanda G. Weiden.

Please send your nominations to [email protected], on or before Friday, 31 October 2008. 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.