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FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the free-as-in-freedom dept.

bkuhn writes "The FSF has posted a a call for nominations for the 2002 FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software. Get your nominations in to <award-nominations@gnu.org> by 15 October 2002."

9 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. Gates by undeg+chwech · · Score: 5, Funny

    I nominate Bill Gates. He should get the award for advancing free software

  2. I nominate KaZaa by anotherone · · Score: 4, Funny

    I've downloaded more free software from kazaa than I ever have from any other source.

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  3. Valgrind by Otter · · Score: 4, Interesting
    This seems to be more a lifetime award than a "Year's Best" but since discussing what the year's biggest contribution should be is a lot more productive and less flame-y:

    I'm going to nominate Valgrind. It's going to greatly improve the performance of Linux software across the board, and puts professional grade profiling in the hands of every MP3 playlist coder on Freshmeat.

    What else? Nothing much happened this year. I'd suggest the Mono developers who seem to have accomplished a lot, but won't because I haven't tried it myself and because it's not especially relevant yet (if ever). Mozilla got a lot better, but they did so much bragging up front I'm not inclined to puff them up again now that they've finally accomplished something.

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  4. Shouldn't this be... by corrosiv · · Score: 4, Insightful


    The GNU Award for the Advancement of GNU Software?

    Define "free" however you like, but I hate hearing "free" when it means GNU. If they want to be so pickey about defining all their terms, they should stop leaning on the ambiguity that the term "free" gives them. The neophyte immediately understands free to be free beer. GNU is exploiting that, since 6 pages of legalese in the GPL doesn't add up to free beer OR free speech.

  5. Re:He already did! - but... by victim · · Score: 5, Funny

    Linus Torvalds has received the award, but the plaque was engraved...
    GNU/Linus Torvalds
    in order to reduce confusion.

  6. Debian Project by Florian · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I couldn't think of a project that has done more for the advancement of free software (in practical terms) than Debian. The years of continuous good work seem to pay off now. While RedHat is popular among corporate customers, Mandrake (and, in Europe: SuSE) among newbie users and people who boot into GNU/Linux only occasionally, it seems as if Debian is becoming the de facto standard distribution of non-corporate advanced users (who typically pick Debian as their second distribution and then stick with it). As a genuinely free distribution, Debian is also much appreciated in education; my university, for example, hosts its own Debian FTP mirror.

    While Debian's Free Software-only politics was controversial some years ago - anyone remember the ugly term "Debian Nazi"? -, it no longer seems so due to DMCA, patenting, and perversions of copyright. Debian has done invaluable work for the Free Software community by thoroughly reviewing the licensing of the software it ships, freeing users from the hassle to become legal experts. Debian users enjoy both the technical excellence and the legal safety of running Debian "main".

    It would be good if the FSF Award were given to Debian to finance work on the new Debian installer. This is the last showstopper piece which prevents massive newbie user adoption of this distribution.

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  7. I nominate... by RadioheadKid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Chris "Monty" Montgomery the mastermind behind Ogg Vorbis and cdparanoia.

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    "Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." -Homer Simpson
  8. How about these guys?!? by tlambert · · Score: 5, Informative

    How about Paul Vixie, for maintaining the comp.sources archives for forever, so that they didn't get lost in the mists of time?

    How about Fred Fish, who pretty much single-handedly invented the compilation distribution disk?

    How about CSRG for BSD UNIX?

    How about Kernighan and Ritchie, for the C language?

    How about DECUS, for the DECUS tapes?

    How about Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, for inventing the modem, and giving the idea away?

    How about Ward Christensen again, for inventing the Xmodem protocol, and giving the software away?

    -- Terry

  9. John Carmack by fault0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've already nominated someone, but anyone want to nominate John Carmack?

    He's released much of id's older under the GPL, most recently Quake2.

    I think he gives a good balance between making money in the commercial sector and releasing code for people to learn and develop from. When a game engine is no longer profitable, he releases it. I think this should serve as a model to other companies to release the code for their old software/abandonware, especially in games.