Award for the Advancement of Free Software
The Free Software Foundation Award for the Advancement of Free Software is presented annually 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. The winner of the 2021 award was announced at LibrePlanet 2022.
Individuals who describe their projects as "open" instead of "free" are eligible nonetheless, provided the software is in fact free/libre.
The 2021 award was received by Paul Eggert, a computer scientist with over three decades of experience contributing to the GNU operating system, including critical components like GCC. In addition to his work on many GNU utilities, Paul is the maintainer of the "tz" database, a widely-used dataset providing information on the world's time zones, with sponsoring by ICANN.
Previous winners include Bradley Kuhn, Jim Meyering, Deborah Nicholson, Karen Sandler, Alexandre Oliva, Werner Koch, Sébastien Jodogne, Matthew Garrett, Dr. Fernando Perez, Yukihiro Matsumoto, Rob Savoye, 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.
For awards prior to 2004, historical award information is also available.
