Software Freedom Conservancy gives its first Distinguished Service Award in Software Freedom to Lance Albertson

[Software Freedom Conservancy]

      Software Freedom Conservancy gives its first Distinguished
        Service Award in Software Freedom to Lance Albertson

URL: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2025/aug/01/distinguished-award-in-lance-albertson/
Social media:
  https://social.sfconservancy.org/notice/AwjtYcDu9ipfkWkNTE

Free software projects can't thrive without support for their
contributors to communicate and collaborate. For over 18 years, Lance
Albertson has devoted himself to providing critically needed
infrastructure for hundreds of the most important free and open source
projects through his work at Oregon State University's Open Source Lab
(OSUOSL) [0]. Besides doing technical work to maintain and improve these
services, he has selflessly mentored and supported generations of the
Lab's students as they develop their own skills. Even prior to OSUOSL,
he contributed to free software as a developer and package maintainer
for Gentoo Linux.

Today at the Free and Open Source Software Yearly conference [1] in
Portland, Oregon, USA, the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) honored
Albertson's invaluable work with its first ever Distinguished Service
Award in Software Freedom.

SFC Community Organizer and Non-Profit Problem Solver Daniel Pono
Takamori -- himself an OSUOSL alum -- presented the award on FOSSY's
keynote stage, sharing, "Lance Albertson has helped the free and open
source community in innumerable ways. Whether it's training and
supporting students, helping them work with large open source projects
and foundations, or just learning what it's like to work as part of a
team in the open, Lance provides critical support for invaluable free
software projects; infrastructure that without which we wouldn't have
the robust ecosystem able to power today's modern technology stacks. I'm
so proud and honored to be able to give this award to Lance."

After receiving the Award, Albertson said, "I'm so surprised and very
thankful. I've been doing this work for a very long time and it's nice
to see a lot of many familiar faces that have come through my program
sitting out there in the audience."

"It's so great to see our work recognized, and I'm so happy to share
this with the lab."

The Award includes a cash gift of $1,024 and a laser-cut wooden plaque
made with free software and free hardware by SFC's Operations Manager
Tracy Homer. Award winners are listed on the awards page [2].

FOSSY runs through Sunday, August 3rd. Those in Portland, OR, can
register on-site and attend. A public livestream is also available on
the streaming page [3].

[0] https://osuosl.org
[1] https://2025.fossy.us/
[2] https://sfconservancy.org/activities/awards
[3] https://2025.fossy.us/streaming/