Nominations sought for the 14th FSF Awards

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has announced that it is accepting nominations for this year's annual Free Software Awards. The awards, now in their 14th year, recognise individuals and projects that have made significant contributions to the open source movement. The "Award for the Advancement of Free Software" is presented annually by FSF president Richard Stallman, and is given to an individual "who has made a great contribution to the progress and development of free software".

Last year's winner of the "Award for the Advancement of Free Software" was Rob Savoye, who took over as lead developer of Gnash, a GNU-licensed Flash player. Savoye has also contributed to Debian and Red Hat Linux, as well as projects such as GCC, GDB, and Cygwin. Previous winners over the years have included Ted Ts'o for his work on the Linux kernel, Guido van Rossum for his development of Python, and Larry Wall.

An "Award for Projects of Social Benefit" will also be made to a project that "intentionally and significantly benefits society through collaboration to accomplish an important social task". This award was introduced in 2005, and has been given to web sites such as Wikipedia and Tor. Nominations close on 7 November; previous winners are not eligible for nomination, but previous nominees can be nominated again. Further information on the awards and nomination procedure can be found in the announcement.

See also:

• FSF announces 2010 Free Software Awards winners, a report from The H.

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