2003-02-08-award Free Software Foundation Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110, USA Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Brussels, Belgium Saturday, February 8, 2003 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Free Software Foundation Bradley M. Kuhn pr@gnu.org +1-617-542-5942 http://www.fsf.org Free Software Foundation Europe Georg C. F. Greve greve@gnu.org +49-40-23809080 http://www.fsfeurope.org The Free Software Foundation (FSF) bestowed today its fifth annual FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software. FSF President and founder, Richard Stallman, presented the award to Professor Lawrence Lessig for promoting understanding of the political dimension of free software, including the idea that "code is law". Lessig has also promoted ideas similar to free software in other related fields. The award ceremony was hosted at the Free and Open Source Software Developers' Meeting (FOSDEM) in collaboration with the Free Software Foundation Europe. A committee of Free Software leaders selected the winner and two other finalists from the nominations received by the public among the thousands of mostly volunteer programmers worldwide who dedicate their time to advancing Free Software. The selection committee included: Enrique A. Chaparro, Frederic Couchet, Hong Feng, Miguel de Icaza, Raju Mathur, Frederick Noronha, Jonas Oberg, Eric Raymond, Guido van Rossum, Peter Salus, Suresh Ramasubramanian, and Larry Wall. Lessig was chosen from three finalists for the award. The other finalists were Bruno Haible and Theo de Raadt. This was the fifth award of this kind. The prior winners were Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Brian Paul, and Guido van Rossum. The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSF Europe) is a charitable non-governmental organization dedicated to all aspects of Free Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate in a digital society. Therefore the freedoms to use, copy, modify and redistribute software -- as described in the Free Software definition - allow equal participation in the information age. Creating awareness for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving people freedom by supporting development of Free Software are central issues of the FSF Europe, which was founded in 2001 as the European sister organization of the Free Software Foundation. More information about the FSF Europe can be found at http://www.fsfeurope.org/. The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of Free (as in freedom) Software - particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants - and Free Documentation for Free Software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software. Their web site, located at http://www.fsf.org, is an important source of information about GNU/Linux. They are headquartered in Boston, MA, USA.