Nominations are officially open for the 5th annual Linux Medical News Freedom (formerly Achievement) Award to be presented at the October 22nd-26th AMIA Fall conference in Washington, D.C. Deadline for entries is July 30th, 2005. Currently this is NOT a officially sponsored event of AMIA. Free and open source software isn’t ‘magic pixie dust’ and there are real people making significant personal sacrifices as well as doing difficult work to make medicine’s free software future a reality. This award is intended to honor the individul or project who has accomplished the most towards the goal of improving medical education and practice through free/open source medical software. The award winner is chosen by a panel of judges. Past recipients have been Tim Cook, K.S. Bhaskar — Fidelity Information Services, Inc., Thomas Beale — Ocean Informatics and Fred Trotter — Uversa and FreeB project.

Individuals can be nominated by themselves or others by sending a 500 word essay to ivaldes@hal-pc.org on why the individual nominated should receive the award. Please limit the essay to 500 words. The award will be given by a panel of judges to the most deserving nominee. This years award consists of the usual coveted plaque and $500. Suitable nominees are not limited to software engineers, but can also be projects, project leaders, academics, journalists, documentation writers and any others who have made significant contributions to open source medical software.

The award will be given at the October 2005 AMIA meeting in Washington, D.C. at a date and time to be announced. Attendance is not required to win the award. Deadline for nominations is July 30th, 2005.

Employees of Linux Medical News and their relatives are not eligible for the award. Posters to Linux Medical News who are not employed by Linux Medical News are eligible for the award.