Free Software Awards: Nominations
I am a member!
"BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA -- Monday, October 15, 2012 -- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GNU Project today announced the opening of nominations for the 15th annual Free Software Awards. The Free Software Awards include the Award for the Advancement of Free Software and the Award for Projects of Social Benefit."
Full announcement here: http://www.fsf.org/news/the-free-software-foundation-opens-nominations-for-the-15th-annual-free-software-awards
More on past winners of these awards:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FSF_Free_Software_Awards
Who do you think should be nominated any why? Is there anybody in particular you would nominate? I can think of a few people. Read the above announcement for how to submit nominations.
I nominated Alexandre Oliva. He does work on Linux-libre, GCC, and a whole heap of other free software projects.
Some of the projects he contributes to are listed at his website: http://www.fsfla.org/~lxoliva/
Of course, I am aware that there are many other free software developers, many of which I probably don't know about. But I thought Linux-libre was very important (especially for Trisquel), so I nominated Alexandre.
I am a member!
Throw out as many names as you can think of.
Alessandro Pignotti (Lightspark developer; Adobe Flash alternative)
It was posted to slashdot if anybody wants to comment:
http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/10/18/226247/fsf-opens-nominations-for-free-software-awards-2012
According to https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/happy-ada-lovelace-day, they are especially looking for people to nominate women for the award this year: "This Ada Lovelace Day, you can help to raise the profile of women in free software by nominating a woman for the Free Software Awards. Each year, the Advancement of Free Software award is given to an individual who has made incredible contributions to free software. There are plenty of women out there who fit the bill, and we need your help to make sure they will be considered for this year's award."
I nominated quidam last year, but he didn't win.
I am a member!
While there may be times to give advantage to some group for one reason or another due to past discriminations or other unfair advantages I've always thought that putting favor in situations like this was wrong. Put forth the woman who have a chance of winning. Don't do it because of the sex though. That's degrading to those woman who really are deserving of the award.
There are probably very few woman deserving of this award having said that. This says nothing about woman though. It's a matter of statistics and the percentages. Even if woman made up 50% that doesn't mean that half the winners should be woman. There are certain advantages woman have in certain areas and certain advantages men have in certain areas. Favoring woman over men is no more right than favoring men over woman in any area.
We probably should encourage and welcome minorities socially. Nobody should feel left out. However giving one group an advantage over another is not doing anyone a service. It says woman aren't or can't be as successful in a particular area. That is probably never the case. It's just fewer are able/interested/etc in this area. The problem with participation is not here anyway. It's elsewhere.
I probably shouldn't have responded to this. It is probably going to get us off topic. Sorry.
Chris made good points. I agree with him. The award should go to one who deserves it because of what (s)he has done and not because of gender.