Nominations for the 20th annual Free Software Awards opened at LibrePlanet 2017, right after the most recent Free Software Awards were presented -- and your opportunity to submit nominations ends on November 5th, 2017, at 23:59 UTC. For details, see instructions below.

If you admire a free software contributor or project and want the world to see how great they are, nominate them today. Your nominations will be reviewed by our awards committee and the winners will be announced at LibrePlanet 2018.

Award for the Advancement of Free Software

The Award for the Advancement of Free Software is presented annually by FSF president Richard Stallman to an individual who has made a great contribution to the progress and development of free software, through activities that accord with the spirit of free software.

Last year, Alexandre Oliva was recognized with the Award for the Advancement of Free Software for his passionate free software advocacy and his role as maintainer of GNU Linux-libre, the fully free version of the kernel Linux. Other previous honorees include Lawrence Lessig, Yukihiro Matsumoto, and Werner Koch.

Award for Projects of Social Benefit

The Award for Projects of Social Benefit is presented to a project or team responsible for applying free software, or the ideas of the free software movement, in a project that intentionally and significantly benefits society in other aspects of life.

We look to recognize projects or teams that encourage people to cooperate in freedom to accomplish tasks of great social benefit, and those that apply free software ideas and lessons outside the free software community. A long-term commitment to one's project (or the potential for a long-term commitment) is crucial to this end.

This award stresses the use of free software in the service of humanity. We have deliberately chosen this broad criterion so that many different areas of activity can be considered. However, one area that is not included is that of free software itself. Projects with a primary goal of promoting or advancing free software are not eligible for this award (we honor individuals working on those projects with our annual Award for the Advancement of Free Software).

We will consider any project or team that uses free software or its philosophy to address a goal important to society. To qualify, a project must use free software, produce free documentation, or use the idea of free software as defined in the Free Software Definition. Projects that promote or depend on the use of nonfree software are not eligible for this award. Commercial projects are not excluded, but commercial success is not our scale for judging projects.

Last year, SecureDrop, an anonymous whistleblowing platform used by major news organizations and maintained by Freedom of the Press Foundation, received the award. Past recipients include Wikipedia, Groklaw, and the GNOME Foundation's Outreach Program for Women (now known as Outreachy).

Eligibility

In the case of both awards, previous winners are not eligible for nomination, but renomination of other previous nominees is encouraged. Only individuals are eligible for nomination for the Advancement of Free Software Award (not projects), and only projects can be nominated for the Social Benefit Award (not individuals). For a list of previous winners, please visit https://www.fsf.org/awards/fs-award. Current FSF staff and board members, as well as award committee members, are not eligible.

Winners will be decided by a committee, which includes several previous winners.

Instructions

After reviewing the eligibility rules above, please click on the links below to submit your nominations. All nominations need to be submitted before Sunday, November 5th, 2017 at 23:59 UTC.

• Nominations for the Award for the Advancement of Free Software

• Nominations for the Award for Projects of Social Benefit

Attend the Free Software Awards at LibrePlanet 2018

Want to be in the room when the winners are announced? Registration is already open for the LibrePlanet conference, March 24-25, 2018, in Cambridge. You can meet the award winners and take part in a program devoted to the world of free software. Remember: Free Software Foundation members attend LibrePlanet gratis!

Participate in supporting the Directory by adding new entries and updating existing ones. We will be on IRC in the #fsf channel on irc.freenode.org.

Tens of thousands of people visit directory.fsf.org each month to discover free software. Each entry in the Directory contains a wealth of useful information, from basic category and descriptions, to providing detailed info about version control, IRC channels, documentation, and licensing info that has been carefully checked by FSF staff and trained volunteers.

While the Directory has been and continues to be a great resource to the world for over a decade now, it has the potential to be a resource of even greater value. But it needs your help!

This week we're back to work on adding new entries to the Directory. The backlog of unapproved packages continues to dwindle, but we want to get it all the way down to zero, and keep adding more. Each new package helps to make the Directory a better resource for finding any sort of software that you may need. The Directory is one of our most visited resources, so keeping it growing ensures there's lots for all those users to see.

If you are eager to help, and you can't wait or are simply unable to make it onto IRC on Friday, our participation guide will provide you with all the information you need to get started on helping the Directory today! There are also weekly Directory Meeting pages that everyone is welcome to contribute to before, during, and after each meeting.

In September, Apple included a new privacy feature in its Safari Web browser as part of its latest iOS and macOS updates. Called "intelligent tracking prevention," it keeps certain Web sites from tracking users around the Web, effectively blocking the ads that follow wherever you browse.

Safari is not free software, so while Apple has taken a step in the right direction by trying to help computer users avoid being tracked by advertisers, it's not enough (and it doesn't negate the fact that there are many other reasons to avoid Apple). And although being able to avoid third-party cookies is the best anti-tracking measure a Web browser can offer, Safari and other widely used browsers, including Chrome, Chromium, Mozilla, and Internet Explorer, all still allow them. (Riseup offers a useful browser privacy scorecard that evaluates some of the most popular Web browsers.)

Fortunately, there is a better option for privacy-respecting Web browsing: GNU IceCat.

GNU IceCat is the GNU version of the Firefox browser, and when it comes to protecting your privacy as you browse the Web, it is a better choice for you than Safari because:

• First, GNU IceCat is free software, as is Firefox. Safari is not. Because anybody can inspect the code of a free software package, none of the package's activities are kept secret -- if free software was spying on you, then you -- or anyone -- could discover that by looking at the code.

• GNU IceCat includes GNU LibreJS, which addresses the problem of proprietary JavaScript by easily identifying it, allowing users to avoid it.

• GNU IceCat also includes the HTTPS Everywhere extension, which encrypts your communications with many major websites, making your browsing more secure.

• And it includes SpyBlock, based on Adblock Plus, which blocks privacy trackers while browsing, and blocks all third-party requests when in private browsing mode.

• IceCat also prevents the leaking of private information through referers. Referer logging tells the Web server what page linked you to your current request. No widely used browsers aside from IceCat address this issue, and even some lesser-known, privacy-oriented browsers let this information slip through.

• Finally, GNU IceCat includes fingerprinting countermeasures. A fingerprint is information collected about your computer in order to identify it, even when cookies are turned off.

If you haven't tried out GNU IceCat, go for it! You only have greater privacy -- and freedom -- to gain. You can also contribute to the IceCat manual, making it easier for others to start using this browser.

Help improve the Free Software Directory by adding new entries and updating existing ones. Every Friday we meet on IRC in the #fsf channel on irc.freenode.org.

Tens of thousands of people visit directory.fsf.org each month to discover free software. Each entry in the Directory contains a wealth of useful information, from basic category and descriptions, to providing detailed info about version control, IRC channels, documentation, and licensing info that has been carefully checked by FSF staff and trained volunteers. When a user comes to the Directory, they know that everything in it is free software, has only free dependencies, and runs on a free OS. With almost 16,000 entries, it is a massive repository of information about free software.

While the Directory has been and continues to be a great resource to the world for many years now, it has the potential to be a resource of even greater value. But it needs your help! And since it's a MediaWiki instance, it's easy for anyone to edit and contribute to the Directory.

Back in 1930, radio plays were all the rage. And on October 20th of that year, NBC radio began airing The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. So freestyling off of Holmes, the theme of the Directory meeting this week is search software. We are painting the category with a broad brush. Search software for the desktop that indexes your files is fair game, and the door is open to Web site indexing and other pattern recognition software. The goal this week is to find as many new programs as possible that fit this bill. Come this Friday: the game is afoot!

If you are eager to help, and you can't wait or are simply unable to make it onto IRC on Friday, our participation guide will provide you with all the information you need to get started on helping the Directory today! There are also weekly Directory Meeting pages that everyone is welcome to contribute to before, during, and after each meeting.

We recently updated our list of various licenses and comments about them to include the Eclipse Public License version 2.0 (EPL).

In terms of GPL compatibility, the Eclipse Public License version 2.0 is essentially equivalent to version 1.0. The only change is that it explicitly offers the option of designating the GNU GPL version 2 or later as a "secondary license" for a certain piece of code.

If an initial contributor releases a specific piece of code and designates GNU GPL version 2 or later as a secondary license, that provides explicit compatibility with those GPL versions for that code. (Doing so is roughly equivalent, for users, to releasing that piece of code under a dual license, EPL | GPL.) However, the EPL2 without this designation remains incompatible with the GPL.

To keep up-to-date on newly-added licenses, as well as current topics and activities in free software, please sign up for our monthly newsletter, the Free Software Supporter.

You can also help support the Compliance Lab's work in reviewing licenses and more by donating to the Free Software Foundation or becoming an associate member.