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<p style="margin: 1.2em 0px !important;">URL: <a
href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/mar/25/fsfawardDeb/">https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/mar/25/fsfawardDeb/</a></p>
<p style="margin: 1.2em 0px !important;">We are proud to announce
that our Director of Community Operations, Deb Nicholson, won
this year’s Award for the Advancement of Free Software. The
award was presented on Saturday, March 23rd at <a
href="https://libreplanet.org/2019/">LibrePlanet</a>, the Free
Software Foundation’s annual conference at MIT’s Stata Center.
The Free Software Foundation gives out <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FSF_Free_Software_Awards">two
awards each year</a>, one for the Advancement of Free Software
and one for Projects of Social Benefit.</p>
<p style="margin: 1.2em 0px !important;">Deb receives the Award
for the Advancement of Free Software for her work to bring free
software to artists and musicians with GNU MediaGoblin as a
Community Liaison and as a founding board member of Open Hatch,
whose mission was to build a welcoming committee for free
software. She’s also a founding organizer of the annual <a
href="https://seagl.org/">Seattle GNU/Linux conference</a> aka
SeaGL, which is committed to surfacing new voices and she works
with Conservancy’s many projects to help them achieve their
goals. She became part of the free software movement in 2006,
when she accepted a job with the Free Software Foundation in
downtown Boston.</p>
<p style="margin: 1.2em 0px !important;">Deb <a
href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2018/may/01/deb-nicholson-director-community-operations/">joined
the Conservancy team</a> a little less than a year ago. “Free
software is critically important for autonomy, privacy and a
healthy democracy — but it can’t achieve that if it is only
accessible for some, or if it is alienating for large swathes of
people. That’s why it’s so important that we continue surfacing
new voices, making room for non-coders and welcoming new
contributors into the free software community. I also find that
in addition to helping us build a better, bigger movement, the
work of welcoming is extremely rewarding,” said Nicholson.</p>
<p style="margin: 1.2em 0px !important;">John Sullivan, Executive
Director at the Free Software Foundation adds, “I couldn’t be
happier about this opportunity for the FSF to publicly honor and
appreciate Deb Nicholson. In the many years I’ve known Deb, I
have seen her directly make so many positive changes in the free
software movement that I can’t keep track: successfully
connecting institutional and financial resources with free
software projects that need them, organizing impactful
conferences, driving program user interface improvements, and
many other initiatives that have both brought more users and
developers to free software and helped everyone get more work
done in critical areas.”</p>
<p style="margin: 1.2em 0px !important;">“Deb’s contributions to
the software freedom movement are longstanding and impressive.
We at Conservancy are thrilled to see her receive the
recognition she deserves,” commented Karen Sandler,
Conservancy’s Executive Director. Deb’s work is all the more
laudable for her commitment to contribute substantial volunteer
hours over a long period of time - even when it wasn’t part of
her job to do so, she took on the tough problems in free
software to help shape a more effective and inclusive movement.”</p>
<p style="margin: 1.2em 0px !important;">This year’s recipient of
the Award for Projects of Social Benefit was <a
href="https://www.hotosm.org/">Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team</a>
aka HOT. The award was accepted on behalf of the project by Kate
Chapman, who served as their first Executive Director. We’re
well acquainted with Kate’s free software work since she has
been serving as a Conservancy Board Director for the last three
years. <a href="https://www.outreachy.org/">Outreachy</a>, now
a Conservancy project, won the Award for Projects of Social
Benefit for 2013 and our Executive Director, Karen Sandler won
the Award for the Advancement of Free Software last year. We
consider it a mark of deep respect that our colleagues think so
highly of our work to promote and share the message of software
freedom.</p>
<h3 id="about-conservancy" style="margin: 1.3em 0px 1em; padding:
0px; font-weight: bold;font-size: 1.3em;">About Conservancy</h3>
<p style="margin: 1.2em 0px !important;">Conservancy, a public
charity focused on ethical technology, is the home of nearly
fifty member projects dedicated to developing free and open
source software. Conservancy acts as a corporate umbrella,
allowing member projects to operate as charitable initiatives
without having to independently manage their own corporate
structure and administrative services.</p>
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