[Fsf-friends] Free Software Award Winner Announced

[Anivar Aravind]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John Sullivan <johns at fsf.org>
Date: Jan 26, 2006 12:53 AM


Boston Massachusetts, USA - Wednesday January 25, 2006. At the
ceremony for the 2006 Free Software Awards, Richard Stallman presented
Andrew Tridgell with the award for the advancement of free software.

Andrew "Tridge" Tridgell was recognized for his work as originator and
developer of the Samba project. Samba reverse-engineered Microsoft's
version of the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol, which is used for
file-sharing and print services. This software enables free operating
systems to fit into Microsoft-based environments, encouraging greater
use and adoption of free software. Samba has been implemented on
millions of servers throughout the world. Tridge also released rsync,
a highly respected remote file-distribution system, and contributed
code to the Linux kernel.

During 2005, Tridge wrote a free software client to interoperate with
BitKeeper, a proprietary revision control system used at the time by
the Linux kernel developers. His reverse-engineering efforts led
BitMover Inc. to remove permission for the use of BitKeeper, paving
the way for a free software replacement. The Linux kernel is now being
developed using a revision control system called Git, begun by Linus
Torvalds and licensed under the GPL.

Every year, three finalists are nominated for the award by the free
software community. This year's other two finalists were Harmut Pilch,
recognized as founder of Foundation for a Free Information
Infrastructure (FFII) and for his leadership during the fight against
the Software Patent Directive in Europe, and Theodore T'so, recognized
for his work on file systems and the Linux kernel.  Previous winners
of the Free Software Award

    * 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: Peter H. Salus (chair), Richard Stallman,
Alan Cox (winner 2003), Lawrence Lessig (winner 2002), Guido van
Rossum (winner 2001), Frederic Couchet, Jonas Oberg, Hong Feng, Bruce
Perens, Raju Mathur, Suresh Ramasubramanian, Enrique A. Chaparro, Ian
Murdock.

The Free Software Foundation sponsors the annual Award for the
Advancement of Free Software, to recognize and honor those that have
made a great contribution to the progress and development of Free
Software (free as in freedom as defined in the Free Software
Definition), through activities that accord with the spirit of
software freedom.

Any kind of activity could be eligible---writing software, writing
documentation, publishing software, even journalism---but whatever the
activity, we want to recognize long-term central contributions to the
development of the world of software freedom. "Accord with the spirit"
means, for example, that software, manuals or collections of them
(online or on CD) must be entirely free. Work done commercially is
eligible, but we give this award to individuals, not to companies,
organizations, or teams. You can support the award and the work of the
Free Software Foundation here.[1]

[1] http://www.fsf.org/donate


--
John Sullivan
Program Administrator        | Phone: (617)542-5942 x23
51 Franklin Street, 5th Fl.  | Fax:   (617)542-2652
Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA    | GPG:   AE8600B6

Anivar Aravind
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