The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has opened the nomination period for its 15th annual Free Software Awards. Comprising the Award for the Advancement of Free Software and the Award for Projects of Social Benefit, the ceremony will be held at the FSF's upcoming LibrePlanet conference, which is tentatively scheduled for March 2013.

Nominations for both awards are open until 15 November after which the winners will be chosen by FSF President Richard Stallman. Previous winners are not eligible to be nominated again, however previous nominees can be submitted again. Individuals can only be nominated for the Advancement of Free Software Award, while the Social Benefit Award is only open to projects and institutions.

At the last ceremony, Ruby inventor Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto received the Award for the Advancement of Free Software and Luis Falcon received the Award for Projects of Social Benefit on behalf of GNU Solidario. Previous individuals and organisations honoured by the FSF include Andrew Tridgell, Alan Cox, Larry Wall, Creative Commons, the Internet Archive and the Tor project.

(fab)