Stallman, Swartz among 32 inductees to the Internet Hall of Fame

FSF founder Richard Stallman, Mosaic co-author Marc Andreessen and Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry Barlow are among 32 inductees to the Internet Hall of Fame this year. The Internet Hall of Fame was founded at the Internet Society’s Global INET conference in Geneva, Switzerland in 2012 and holds annual awards to publicly honour individuals "who have made significant contributions to the development and advancement of the global Internet."

The inductees are divided into three categories comprising "pioneers", "connectors" and "innovators". As well as Stallman, Andreessen and Barlow, the innovators category also posthumously honours Reddit co-founder and RSS developer Aaron Swartz. Jimmy Wales was inducted for the creation of Wikipedia. The pioneers category includes early internet protocol developer David Clark, Kanchana Kanchanasut, who was instrumental in bringing the internet to Thailand, and Ethernet co-creator Robert Metcalfe. Werner Zorn was recognised for leading the team that created the German infrastructure to connect to the global network.

The connectors category includes Ida Holz, who was instrumental in bringing the internet to Latin America, Teus Hagen, who created the European Unix User Group and started EUnet, and Qiheng Hu who led the team that brought the internet to mainland China.

The Internet Hall of Fame editorial staff has announced that over the next year, it will write feature articles consisting of interviews and profiles to "chronicle the historic contributions of these individuals". The series of articles will appear on the Internet Hall of Fame Blog.

See also:

• Internet Hall of Fame: awards for "open internet" work, a report from The H.
  

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