[GNU/FSF Press] [FSF] Wietse Venema and Creative Commons winners of the annual free software awards

[Peter Brown]

  Wietse Venema and Creative Commons announced as winners of the annual
  free software awards

http://www.fsf.org/news/2008_free_software_awards


BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA -- March 24, 2009 -- The Free Software
Foundation (FSF) announced the winners of the annual free software
awards during the GNU/Linux conference LibrePlanet, held on March 21-22
at Harvard Science Center in Cambridge, MA.

Creative Commons was honored with the Award for Projects of Social
Benefit, and Wietse Venema was honored with the Award for the
Advancement of Free Software. Presenting the awards was FSF founder and
president Richard Stallman.

The FSF Award for Projects of Social Benefit is presented annually to a
project that intentionally and significantly benefits society by
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.

Since its launch in 2001, Creative Commons has worked to foster a
growing body of creative, educational and scientific works that can be
shared and built upon by others. Creative Commons has also worked to
raise awareness of the harm inflicted by increasingly restrictive
copyright regimes.

Creative Commons vice president Mike Linksvayer accepted the award
saying, "It's an incredible honor. Creative Commons should be giving an
award to the Free Software Foundation and Richard Stallman, because what
Creative Commons is doing would not be possible without them."

In receiving this award, Creative Commons joins previous winners Groklaw
(2007), Sahana (2006), and Wikipedia (2005).

The Award for the Advancement of Free Software went to Wietse Venema.
The awards committee honored both Venema's significant and wide-ranging
technical contributions to network security, and his creation of the
Postfix email server. Venema said, "In my experience, free software
presents a tremendous opportunity for individuals and organizations to
make contributions to society. I'm grateful for the opportunities that I
have had over the past twenty years, and I'm proud that so many people
have adopted my software."

Venema joins a distinguished list of previous free software award winners:

    * 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

This year's award committee was composed of Suresh Ramasubramanian
(Chair), Peter H. Salus, Raj Mathur, Hong Feng, Andrew Tridgell, Jonas
Oberg, Verner Vinge, Richard Stallman, and Fernanda G. Weiden.


      About the FSF

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
<http://donate.fsf.org/>. Its headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA.


      Media Contacts

John Sullivan
Operations Manager
Free Software Foundation
+1 (617) 542 5942 x23
address@hidden <mailto:address@hidden>

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