Call for nominations for the 13th annual Free Software Awards

Please send your nominations to award-nominations@gnu.org, on or before Wednesday, 16 February 2011.

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, John Gilmore was recognized with the Award for the Advancement of Free Software for his contributions to network security. Gilmore joined a prestigious list of previous winners including 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 2010 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.

Last year, The Internet Archive received this award, in recognition of its work to foster a growing body of creative, educational and scientific works that can be shared and built upon by others, and to raise awareness of the harm inflicted by increasingly restrictive copyright regimes.

Previous winners have included 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 the last year's award committee was composed of: Suresh Ramasubramanian (Chair), Peter H. Salus, Raj Mathur, Hong Feng, Andrew Tridgell, Jonas Oberg, Verner Vinge, Richard Stallman, and Fernanda G. Weiden.

Please send your nominations to award-nominations@gnu.org, on or before Wednesday, 16 February 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 announced at an awards ceremony at the LibrePlanet 2011 conference on March 19th, 2011, in Boston.