GNU calls nomination for the 2002 Free Software Awards

Posted 6 Sep 2002 at 19:16 UTC by atai Share This

The FSF is calling nomination for the 2002 Free Software Awards. Nominations can be sent to award-nominations@gnu.org.

From the FSF announcement:

The FSF and the GNU project request nominations for the 2002 FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software. We want to give this award to a person who has made a great contribution to the progress and development of Free Software (free as in freedom; see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html for the definition), through activities that accord with the spirit of software freedom.

Any kind of activity could be eligible -- writing software, writing documentation, publishing CDs, even 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.

People such as Miguel de Icaza, Donald Knuth, Brian Paul, Guido van Rossum, Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, and Larry Wall who have already received this or other awards for their contributions, are not eligible for the Award for the Advancement of Free Software. Among those who are eligible, the award committee will try to choose whoever has made the greatest contribution.

Please send your nominations to <award-nominations@gnu.org>, on or before 15 October 2002. 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 software which your nomination is based on.

Information about the previous awards can be found online at: http://www.gnu.org/award/

-- Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director
Free Software Foundation | Phone: +1-617-542-5942
59 Temple Place, Suite 330 | Fax: +1-617-542-2652
Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA | Web: http://www.gnu.org

People eligible include (but not limited to) Alan Cox, Raph Levien and Havoc Pennington...


John Gilmore, posted 8 Sep 2002 at 14:33 UTC by adulau » (Journeyer)

If you don't know him.

He is helping to keep the Freedom in the Information Society (from EFF to alt usenet creation), he is also a Free Software developer.

Wietse Venema was also in my list.

Chuck Moore, posted 10 Sep 2002 at 17:44 UTC by sye » (Journeyer)

I'd like to nominate Chuck Moore, inventor of Forth and ColorForth. But 'freedom' Chuck Moore has embodied into his inventions, designs, patents etc. is not quite the same thing as what FSF advocates. So i shall restrain myself from acting like a fool. IMHO, Free association is not a freedom granted unilaterally, but through mutual understanding outside the sphere of legality and formality. Recognition under any context carries the cost of depriving the nominee from being oblivion and being free of any misrepresentation. Is it not?

Edsger W. Dijkstra 1930-2002, posted 10 Sep 2002 at 18:11 UTC by badvogato » (Master)

In Pursuit of Simplicity . Evenly distribute awards among his students sounds like a perfect plan to me!

David Faure, posted 11 Sep 2002 at 16:34 UTC by neil » (Master)

David Faure wrote and maintains a good portion of Konqueror, KWord, and KParts. He is now the KOffice Release Coordinator and once served as KDE Release Coordinator.

What's free to GNU?, posted 12 Sep 2002 at 21:41 UTC by ishmukler » (Journeyer)

What exactly is free software to FSF? Is that software covered by GPL, or is it software that is being distributed free of charge. FreeBSD is free, but BSD license is nothing like GPL. Does a nominee have to distribute sources? Do they have to be covered by viral license?

I am trying to start flame war, I just think that I have a good candidate or even several candidates, but I am not sure whether FSF's definition of freedom is applicable to their contributions.

One person that I'd like to nominate is John S. Dyson, who did great deal of work on FreeBSD. His work is one of major factors making people use FreeBSD as well as other *BSD systems.

Check out their web page, posted 12 Sep 2002 at 22:54 UTC by AlanShutko » (Journeyer)

This should answer your questions, ishmukler.

See past award recipients, posted 13 Sep 2002 at 04:51 UTC by atai » (Journeyer)

ishmukler, before you post, you could have at least done some research on the past recipients of the award, two of whom were not even for GPLed software (Brian Paul for Mesa (BSDed) and Guido van Rossum for Python).

You are pro-BSD, that's fine, but you should not jump in to start a flame war (as you stated) just because you don't like the GPL. At least the FSF is not as biased as you are, it seems.

Christopher Montgomery, posted 13 Sep 2002 at 07:23 UTC by Omnifarious » (Journeyer)

I think Christopher Montgomery, the person who runs the Ogg project deserves a nomination. I think open media formats are one of the most important places for Open Source right now. Audio and video information should not be locked behind proprietary technologies and file formats. I think Christopher Montgomery has done more for open media formats than anybody.

May I nominate myself?, posted 13 Sep 2002 at 13:09 UTC by badvogato » (Master)

Not for this term, but stay tuned for year 2005, 2010,2020,2040,2080...? Interested freedom fighters, please write to stupid@cyberspace.org for more info on the work i plan to release in the above designated years and many more to come...

Badvogato, planning for 2080, posted 13 Sep 2002 at 15:39 UTC by atai » (Journeyer)

Badvogato, unless what I learned about English grammar was incorrect, from the sentence We want to give this award to a person who has made a great contribution to the progress and development of Free Software the FSF wants to award achievements that have happened already, not in 2005 or beyond, I think...

If you can provide more details on what you plan to release, maybe the people here can keep them in mind and start planning to nominate you in 2080. A long time of planning (documenting your progress along the way, for example) surely increases your chances of winning.

Re: FSF is not as biased as you are, posted 13 Sep 2002 at 20:27 UTC by ishmukler » (Journeyer)

atai, maybe I should have researched on awards, or maybe you should have. I checkout out link supplied by AlanShutko which was exactly answer to my question. It seems Free Software in this context is exactly under GNU take of the freedom. Now, I am not biased. I use GCC and some other GNU products. My problem with GPL is that it is being advertised as free, when in fact it is limiting license. It's good for tools, but not good from other type of products. That's why GNU had to come up with LGPL, to address some of shortcomings of GPL.

Maybe you should have supplied more information when you posted this cut from the announcement.

if you say so, atai..., posted 13 Sep 2002 at 20:27 UTC by badvogato » (Master)

i'll shoot for 2080 for real. A side note is that a subset of people here should feel obliged to nominate Raph for the award. Of course, this subset does not include those who posted articles about how they can delete their own accounts from this site. I feel sorry for them. Blame your mother, man, if you want to delete yourself, your mother shouldn't have given you a life. Ok. i retract that comment, blame the computer, it should have generated a segfault at the time when you try to create an account.

I don't know what link you were reading ishmukler ..., posted 16 Sep 2002 at 13:40 UTC by movement » (Master)

... but it obviously wasn't either of the two links given in this article. I'm amazed you managed to work out that it meant the GPL only given :

1) GNU's Free Software definition makes no specific mention of the GPL

2) Previous winners have won their awards for non-GPL software

3) The good BSD licenses are explicitly listed by on the GNU site as free software licenses, and that list is linked to directly from the definition

You may or may not disagree with the FSF's definition of free software, but I think even you must agree it would be a little odd for them to hand out awards in contravention of their own guidelines, no ?

I don't think this is the appropriate place for another tired ill-informed, badly-argued, "discussion" of licenses.

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