Call for nominations for the 2005 FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GNU Project announce the request for nominations for the 2005 FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software. This award is presented 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 software freedom (as defined in the Free Software Definition).

Last year's winner, Theo de Raadt, was recognized for his work as founder and project leader of the OpenBSD and OpenSSH projects. Theo joined a prestigious list of previous winners including Alan Cox, Miguel de Icaza, Larry Lessig, Brian Paul, Guido van Rossum, and Larry Wall.

Any kind of activity could be eligible -- writing software, writing documentation, publishing CDs, journalism -- but whatever the activity, we want to recognize long-term central contributions to the development of the world of software freedom. "Accord with the spirit" means, for example, that software, manuals, or collections of them (online or on CD), must be entirely free. Work done commercially is eligible, but we give this award to individuals, not to companies, organizations, or teams.

Previous winners of this award as well as Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, and Donald Knuth, are not eligible for nomination, but renomination of other previous nominees is encouraged. From those who are eligible, the award committee will try to choose the person who has made the greatest contribution.

The 2004 award committee was composed of Enrique Chaparro, Frederic Couchet, Alan Cox, Hong Feng, Raj Mathur, Frederick Noronha, Suresh Ramasubramanian, Peter Salus, Richard Stallman, Vernor Vinge and Larry Wall.

Please send your nominations to <award-nominations@gnu.org>, on or before Monday 31 October 2005. Please submit nominations in the following format:

• Put the name of the person you are nominating in the email message subject line.
• Please include, in the body of your message, an explanation (40 lines or less) of the work the person has done and why you think it is especially important to software freedom.
• 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.gnu.org/award/.