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For thirty years, the Free Software Foundation has been seen as a guiding light for the free software movement, fighting for user freedom.

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1999 Free Software Award

For the 1999 Free Software Award, we have received a lot of nominees. They are, in alphabetical order:

We want to give this award to a person who has made a great contribution to the progress and development of free software (free as in freedom; see our definition of free software), through activities that accord with the spirit of free software.

Any kind of activity could be eligible—writing software, writing documentation, publishing CDs, even journalism—but whatever the activity, we want to recognize long-term central contributions to the development of the world of free software. “Accord with the spirit” means, for example, that software, manuals or collections of them (on tape or CD) must be entirely free. (Once again, that's free as in freedom; see our philosophy on selling free software.) Work done commercially is eligible, but we want to give awards to individuals, not companies.

People such as Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, and Larry Wall, who have already received this or other awards for their contributions, are not eligible for the Free Software Award.

The award committee members are Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond, Peter Salus, Richard Stallman, and Larry Wall.

Here is a list of prior years' awards.

[FSF logo] “Our mission is to preserve, protect and promote the freedom to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer software, and to defend the rights of Free Software users.”

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