At the recent LibrePlanet conference, Karen Sandler was awarded the Free Software Foundation's annual Award for the Advancement of Free Software. It is awarded annually to individuals who have made great contributions to the progress and development of free software, as a result of activities in accordance with the spirit of free software.
Richard Stallman, President of the FSF, presented Sandler with the award during a ceremony. Stallman highlighted Sandler's dedication to software freedom. Stallman told the crowd that Sandler's "vivid warning about backdoored nonfree software in implanted medical devices has brought the issue home to people who never wrote a line of code. Her efforts, usually not in the public eye, to provide pro bono legal advice to free software organizations and [with Software Freedom Conservancy] to organize infrastructure for free software projects and copyleft defense, have been equally helpful.".
Among other things, Karen Sandler is known for her long-term quest towards getting access to the source code for the embedded medical device on which her life depends.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by shrewdsheep on Thursday March 29 2018, @07:59AM
Another problem with prizes is that you will run out of people worthy of the prize at some point. You start awarding the lesser folks, lowering standards and denuding the prize of its value.