FSF Awards for John Gilmore and Archive.org
At the LibrePlanet conference, held in Cambridge MA. on Saturday, the Free Software Foundation presented its annual free software awards. Winners were the software activist John Gilmore and the internet archive, Archive.org.
John Gilmore accepted the prize for the "Advancement of Free Software" from FSF President Richard Stallman. Since the founding of his company, Cygnus Solutions, in 1989, Gilmore has stood for the application of free software, especially in his contributions to the GNU debugger.
The award for the "Project of Social Benefit" went to the internet archive and was received by co-founder of the archive, Brewster Kahle. The archive contains around 1.8 million books, either from the public domain or freely accessible due to expired copyright. Films and music with the same criteria can also be found in the archive.
Previous winners of the ''Advancement'' award have been:
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 ''Social Benefit Award'' has gone to:
2008 Creative Commons
2007 Groklaw
2006 Sahana Disaster Management System
2005 Wikipedia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Digital Autonomy
• The Answer Was Already on the Shelf
• Changing the Chip Industry: How Public Investment Has Grown Open Silicon
• United Nations Open Source Portal Goes Live
• EU Open Source Strategy Plays Key Role in Tech Sovereignty Package
• France Says “Au Revoir” to Microsoft
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.
News
-
KDE for People Initiative Calls for AI Ban in Plasma
A new community of KDE wants the project to adopt a strict no-AI policy for KDE Plasma.
-
KDE Sets Ambitious Goals for 2026 and Beyond
KDE Connect reveals the goals for the Linux desktop darling, with one of those goals long overdue.
-
It’s Time to Test Fedora 45 Beta
Fedora 45 beta has been released with updated Gnome, KDE Plasma, and kernel.
-
Ubuntu Stonking Stingray Gets Even Rustier
Ubuntu 26.10 has completed its migration to the Rust-based coreutils.
-
AI Fixes Linux Bottlenecks Using “Hideous” Code
A Linux developer used AI to fix bottlenecks that caused problems when building the kernel. The resulting AI-generated code needed a lot of work.
-
Advanced Video Coding Still Under Patent
Brazilian patent BRPI0109962B1 has expired, which means that DivX and Xvid are no longer problematic for Linux, but it doesn’t mean that video is all of a sudden fully unleashed.
-
2,000 Vulnerabilities per Linux Release
Thanks to AI bug hunters, the Linux kernel is seeing record numbers of vulnerabilities, and it's overwhelming developers.
-
Linux Exempt from California’s Age Verification Law
So long as Linux is distributed under the GPL, MIT, BSD, and Apache licenses, the OS is exempt from being required to verify the age of its users in California.
-
Roll Out the Cake: Linux Turns 35
35 years ago, a Finnish student began a humble project that would forever change the course of technology.
-
China Switching from Windows to Linux
China has ordered several government agencies to drop a Chinese-developed version of Windows 10 in favor of either KylinOS or UOS.