The deadline for nominations for the 16th Annual Free Software Awards has been extended to November 6. So if you know of a pioneer or project that deserves recognition there's still time.

The Free Software Foundation makes two awards each year:

• Award for the Advancement of Free Software goes to an  individual who has made a great contribution to the progress and development of free software, through activities that accord with the spirit of free software
  
  

• Award for Projects of Social Benefit goes to a project or team responsible for applying free software, or the ideas of the free software movement, to a project that intentionally and significantly benefits society

The most recent winner of the individual award was Dr. Fernando Perez for the creation of iPython. In receiving the award, he joined fellow programming language creators Yukihiro Matsumoto (Ruby),  Larry Wall (Perl) and Guido van Rossum (Python) and other previous winners, Rob Savoye, John Gilmore, Wietse Venema, Harald Welte, Ted Ts'o, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Alan Cox, Larry Lessig, Brian Paul and Miguel de Icaza,

The award that stresses the use of free software in the service of humanity is made to a project rather than an individual. Last year it went to OpenMRS in recognition of its free software medical record system for developing countries. Previous winners have included GNU Health, Tor, the Internet Archive, Creative Commons, Groklaw, the Sahana project, and Wikipedia.

Nominations are required by email with an explanation of forty lines or less why the individual or project proposed is especially important to the advancement of software freedom or how it benefits society, see full details. It's worth noting  that previous nominees who didn't win are eligible for re-nomination.

The winners of the 2013 awards will be announced at next year's  LibrePlanet conference, tentatively scheduled for March 2014, in Boston, Massachusetts, by FSF president Richard Stallman.