Open Source Activist Winner of Nation’s Top Award for Public Interest Computing

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MEDIA INQUIRIES:
Christopher Herrera
Tides Foundation
415.561.6400
cherrera(at)tides.org

SAN FRANCISCO, JANUARY 30, 2008 — Tides Foundation announces the winner of the second annual $10,000 Pizzigati Prize. Barry Warsaw, a software developer dedicated to identifying and solving the technological problems that confront social change movements, has won the Antonio Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest.

Barry Warsaw is being recognized for his work as the lead developer of GNU Mailman, the open source application that hundreds of nonprofits around the world are now using to manage electronic mail discussions and e-newsletter lists.

The Pizzigati Prize — an award program launched two years ago by Tides Foundation’s Florence and Frances Family Fund — aims to honor individuals who, in the spirit of open source computing, fashion outstanding applications that help nonprofits become more effective in their ongoing social change efforts.

Mr. Warsaw’s free Mailman application, the judges for this year’s Pizzigati Prize observed, has built up a large, experienced base of users who have been more than willing to help new users make the best possible use of the software. And Mailman’s design and development team actively listens to — and interacts with — everyday users.

These interactions reflect Warsaw’s core software development values.  A software engineer for over 25 years, Warsaw emphasizes the importance of healthy communities in software development. “I hope that the Mailman project has served as a good model for open source software development. More than that, I hope that the community of Mailman users reflects my deeply held ideals of how we start by treating each other with empathy, kindness, and respect, and how we create positive social change by sharing those lessons with the wider world around us.”

The Pizzigati Prize honors the brief life of Tony Pizzigati, an early advocate of open source computing who spent his college years at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology, where he worked at the world-famous MIT Media Lab and later the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. Three years after his 1992 graduation, Pizzigati, then 24 and a software consultant, died in an auto accident on his way into Silicon Valley.

The four judges on the Pizzigati Prize judging panel (Allison Fine, George Hotelling, Joseph Mouzon, and Katrin Verclas) have each earned wide respect within the nonprofit computing world.

More information about the judges and the judging criteria appear on the Pizzigati Prize Web site at www.pizzigatiprize.org. Also available on the site: links to the work of this year’s six prize finalists. This Year’s Pizzigati Prize finalists, besides Barry Warsaw, included:

• August Detlefsen, for the Open Architecture Network, the first open source community dedicated to improving living conditions for the world’s poor through innovative and sustainable design.
• Nate Aune, for Plone4Artists, a suite of products for Plone, an open source content management system.
• Heather Cronk, for PledgeBank, a nonprofit Web site designed to get groups of people motivated to meet challenges they otherwise might not undertake.
• Subramanya Sastry, for NewsRack, a Web application that helps researchers and nonprofits more precisely track the news that impacts their work.
• T.J. Downes, for Kalender, an open source application that nonprofits can use for planning and scheduling a wide variety of events.

The deadline for the third annual Pizzigati Prize will be September 1, 2008. Application forms and background information will be available shortly on the Pizzigati Prize Web site.

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