The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GNU Project today announced the opening of nominations for the 16th annual Free Software Awards. The Free Software Awards include the Award for the Advancement of Free Software and the Award for Projects of Social Benefit.
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, Dr. Fernando Perez was recognized with the Award for the Advancement of Free Software for the creation of IPython. IPython provides a rich architecture for interactive computing with a debugger, editor, and Python command-line interpreter all in one. Perez joined a prestigious list of previous winners including 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.
Award for Projects of Social Benefit
Nominations are also open for the 2013 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, to 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, though 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 the philosophy of software freedom 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, OpenMRS received the award, in recognition of its free software medical record system for developing countries. OpenMRS is now in use around the world, including South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Uganda, Tanzania, Haiti, India, China, the United States, Pakistan, the Phillipines, and many other places.
Previous winners have included GNU Health, Tor, 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 award-nominations@gnu.org, on or before Friday, November 1st, 2013. 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 (forty 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 https://www.fsf.org/awards. Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony at the LibrePlanet conference, tentatively scheduled for March 2014, in Boston, Massachusetts.
