Matthias Ettrich Awarded German Medal of Merit

Nov 09, 2009

KDE founder Matthias Ettrich was awarded the highest accolade available in the German Republic for services to the common good on Friday.

(c)kde.org: Matthias with his freshly awarded German Federal Cross of Merit

When notified of the award, Ettrich at first thought it was spam, reports Mirko Boehm at kde.org. Yet he did not receive the honor for founding KDE in 1996 only, but also for his engagement in free software in general. In his acceptance speech, he had just one question, ''So, now what is next?''.

Ettrich was awarded the medal by state secretary Almuth Nehring-Venus, who noted that not only is Ettrich one of the youngest recipients of the prestigious award, but it was the first ceremony where the award-winner's young children were also present.

We congratulate Matthias on his award and hope he will carry on with his innovative work in free software for a long time to come.

Related content

  • FSFE Founder Georg Greve Awarded German Cross of Merit

    Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) founding president Georg Greve was awarded the German Cross of Merit for his intervention on the part of free software and open standards.

  • LinuxTag 2009: GUIs of the Future with QML

    In his keynote at the LinuxTag 2009 in Berlin, KDE founder Matthias Ettrich spoke about the future of user interfaces on mobile devices. In the process he presented QML, the newest development from his employer Qt Software.

  • OpenSuse Hack Week III Winners Announced

    OpenSuse community manager Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier today announced the winners of the 3rd OpenSuse Hack Week. Prizes were given in three categories; best performance in multi-project cooperation, the Penguin Award for the most original project and an award for the best project per se.

  • Qt Dev Days 2009 in Pictures

    To give an impression of the Qt Developer Days 2009 in Munich, Germany, we have some pics of the N900, Nyström, Knoll and others.

  • Qt Developer Days: Previews of Qt 4.5 and 4.6

    In his keynote at the Qt Developer Days 2008, Matthias Ettrich covered the upcoming versions 4.5 and 4.6 of Qt due to release the beginning and end of 2009, respectively.

comments powered by Disqus
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters

Support Our Work

Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

Learn More

News