by
Matt Lee
—
Published on
Mar 26, 2012 12:41 PM
BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA — Monday, March 26th, 2012
—
Free Software Foundation president Richard M. Stallman announced the
winners of the FSF's annual free software awards at a ceremony on
Sunday, March 25th, held during the LibrePlanet 2012 conference at the
University of Massachusetts, Boston.
The Award for the Advancement of Free Software is given annually to an
individual who has made a great contribution to the progress and
development of free software, through activities that accord with the
spirit of free software.
Yukihiro Matsumoto and Richard Stallman.
This year, it was given to Yukihiro Matsumoto (aka Matz), the creator
of the Ruby programming language. Matz has worked on GNU, Ruby, and
other free software for over 20 years. He accepted the award in person
and spoke at the conference on his early experiences with free
software, especially the influence of GNU Emacs on Ruby.
Yukihiro Matsumoto joins a distinguished list of previous winners:
- 2010 Rob Savoye
- 2009 John Gilmore
- 2008 Wietse Venema
- 2007 Harald Welte
- 2006 Ted Ts'o
- 2005 Andrew Tridgell
- 2004 Theo de Raadt
- 2003 Alan Cox
- 2002 Lawrence Lessig
- 2001 Guido van Rossum
- 2000 Brian Paul
- 1999 Miguel de Icaza
- 1998 Larry Wall
The Award for Projects of Social Benefit is presented to the project
or team responsible for applying free software, or the ideas of the
free software movement, in a project that intentionally and
significantly benefits society in other aspects of life. This award
stresses the use of free software in the service of humanity.
Luis Falcon and Richard Stallman.
This year, the award went to GNU Health, a free software project that
works with health professionals around the world to improve the lives
of the underprivileged. GNU Health has been adopted as the Health and
Hospital Information System of choice by the United Nations
University. Luis Falcon, the president of GNU Solidario (the
organization behind GNU Health), was present to accept the award on
behalf of the project.
GNU Health joins an impressive list of previous winners:
- 2010 Tor
- 2009 Internet Archive
- 2008 Creative Commons
- 2007 Groklaw
- 2006 Sahana Disaster Management System
- 2005 Wikipedia
This year's award committee was: Suresh Ramasubramanian, Peter
H. Salus, Wietse Venema, Raj Mathur, Hong Feng, Andrew Tridgell, Jonas
Oberg, Vernor Vinge, Richard Stallman, Fernanda G. Weiden, Harald
Welte, and Rob Savoye.
About the Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to
promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and
redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and
use of free (as in freedom) software -- particularly the GNU operating
system and its GNU/Linux variants -- and free documentation for free
software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and
political issues of freedom in the use of software, and its Web sites,
located at fsf.org and gnu.org, are an important source of information
about GNU/Linux. Donations to support the FSF's work can be made at
http://donate.fsf.org. Its headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA.
Media Contacts
John Sullivan
Executive Director
Free Software Foundation
+1 (617) 542 5942
campaigns@fsf.org
High resolution press photos
Photos under CC BY 3.0
Attribution by
Jason X Self.
