Mark J. Wielaard (mjw) receives Distinguished Service Award in Software Freedom

[Justin Wheeler]

Hi Fedora folks! 👋🏻

Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) honored *Mark J. Wielaard* (mjw) with
the second annual Distinguished Service Award in Software Freedom at *FOSSY
2026*. This award recognizes decades of dedicated service to software
freedom in both volunteer and professional capacities.

Within Fedora, Mark plays a critical role in maintaining the foundation of
our development and debugging stack. He is the package maintainer for
several core packages, including:

* debugedit
* dwz
* elfutils
* rpm
* systemtap
* valgrind

Beyond his essential packaging work for Fedora, Mark's broader impact on
the FOSS ecosystem includes:

* *Tooling & Standards*: Long-time maintainer of the Valgrind and elfutils
projects, and member of the DWARF Debugging Standard Committee.
* *Securing Open Java*: Led the IcedTea project to bridge core Java
libraries with free software alternatives.
* *Critical Infrastructure*: Voluntarily maintaining Sourceware, a
developer hosting platform.

Please join in congratulating Mark on this outstanding and deeply deserved
recognition! 👏🏻🎉👏🏻

You can read the full SFC announcement and celebration remarks here:
https://sfconservancy.org/news/2026/aug/12/mark-j-wielaard-receives-2-annual...

[Simon de Vlieger]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2026, at 10:30 PM, Justin Wheeler via devel wrote:
> Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) honored *Mark J. Wielaard* (mjw) 
> with the second annual Distinguished Service Award in Software Freedom 
> at *FOSSY 2026*. This award recognizes decades of dedicated service to 
> software freedom in both volunteer and professional capacities.

Congrats Mark!