[FSF] Submit your nominations for the 2008 Free Software Awards

[Matt Lee]

Nominations are requested by 31 October 2008.

BOSTON, August 12, 2008 -- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the
GNU Project announce the requests for nominations for the 11th annual
Free Software Awards.

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 a person 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, Harald Welte was awarded the Award for the Advancement of
Free Software in recognition for his contributions to the Linux kernel
and the OpenMoko mobile platform project, and his community leadership
in safeguarding the freedom of free software users by successfully
enforcing the GNU General Public License through the gpl-violations.org
project. Welte joined a prestigious list of previous winners including
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 2008 Award for Projects of Social
Benefit. The Social Benefit award recognizes a project that
intentionally and significantly benefits society through collaboration
to accomplish an important social task.

The previous winners of the Award for Projects of Social Benefit were
Groklaw, in 2007, Sahana project in 2006, and Wikipedia, in 2005.
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 2008 award committee has not been finalized, but the 2007 award
committee was composed of: Peter H. Salus (Chair), Raj Mathur, Hong
Feng, Lawrence Lessig, Andrew Tridgell, Jonas Oberg, Verner Vinge,
Richard Stallman, Alan Cox, Suresh Ramasubramanian and Fernanda G. Weiden.

Please send your nominations to address@hidden, on or before
Friday, 31 October 2008. 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 (40
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
http://www.fsf.org/awards.

Winners will be recognized at an awards ceremony.

Nominations are requested by 31 October 2008.