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
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 Unleashes Plasma 6.5
The Plasma 6.5 desktop environment is now available with new features, improvements, and the usual bug fixes.
-
Xubuntu Site Possibly Hacked
It appears that the Xubuntu site was hacked and briefly served up a malicious ZIP file from its download page.
-
LMDE 7 Now Available
Linux Mint Debian Edition, version 7, has been officially released and is based on upstream Debian.
-
Linux Kernel 6.16 Reaches EOL
Linux kernel 6.16 has reached its end of life, which means you'll need to upgrade to the next stable release, Linux kernel 6.17.
-
Amazon Ditches Android for a Linux-Based OS
Amazon has migrated from Android to the Linux-based Vega OS for its Fire TV.
-
Cairo Dock 3.6 Now Available for More Compositors
If you're a fan of third-party desktop docks, then the latest release of Cairo Dock with Wayland support is for you.
-
System76 Unleashes Pop!_OS 24.04 Beta
System76's first beta of Pop!_OS 24.04 is an impressive feat.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 is Available
Linus Torvalds has announced that the latest kernel has been released with plenty of core improvements and even more hardware support.
-
Kali Linux 2025.3 Released with New Hacking Tools
If you're a Kali Linux fan, you'll be glad to know that the third release of this famous pen-testing distribution is now available with updates for key components.
-
Zorin OS 18 Beta Available for Testing
The latest release from the team behind Zorin OS is ready for public testing, and it includes plenty of improvements to make it more powerful, user-friendly, and productive.