The European SFS Foundation recently announced the recipient of the European SFS Award 2025. Jean-Baptiste Kempf, the community leader of VideoLAN and a key developer of the popular media player VLC, was chosen for this prestigious award. Known for his outstanding contributions to free software and years of dedication to the VLC project, Jean-Baptiste Kempf has played a significant role in the development of VLC, which has garnered 6.5 billion downloads since its inception as a student initiative in 1996.
The European SFS Award, which honors individuals who have made notable contributions to the advancement of free software in Europe, will be presented to Jean-Baptiste Kempf in 2023. Past recipients of this award include Frank Karlitschek, the creator of the NextCloud cloud platform in 2023, and Bram Moolenaar, the author of the text editor Vim, who received the award posthumously in 2024.