We can chuckle at the idea, as I certainly have, of Free Beer that is “free as in free speech” but not “free as in free beer”. But it is one of the best pedagogic instruments we have.

Free Beer is now at version 4.0, and everyone is invited to brew some, improve the recipe, and share their improvements with the community of beer lovers all around the world. Anyone is also free to brew Free Beer in their commercial brewery and sell it on the market as a commodity, essentially asking their customers to think not about “free beer” but “free speech”. The open source recipe is constantly improving because of the effort put in by the distributed, volunteer beer hackers, as well as because of competition between the commercial brewers in the market. I think this is easier to explain than Red Hat.

Beautiful. We have won.

The volunteer community has taken care of translations, arranged events around the country, promoted Linux and Free Software to legislators and, above all, provided user support through its web forum.

Mirv accepting the prize.
(Photo from the ubuntu-fi blog)

Congratulations to our most excellent LoCo Team!

Two honorable mentions were awarded as well. One was given to the Linux.fi wiki. The choice further emphasizes the great importance that peer-provided support and documentation has for the success of Free Software. The other one went to Monty Widenius, the founder of MySQL. Yes, in case you didn’t know, he is yet another Finn helping build the tools for our road to software freedom. :) Altough MySQL is not directly related to LInux, as one of the pillars of the near-ubiqutuous LAMP stack, its success is very much tied to that of Linux.

Cheers to these Honored Ones too!

[1] Yes, there is only one. It is a small country :)

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