The Electronic Frontier Foundation announced its prestigious Pioneer Awards today, and one of the three lucky winners for 2005 is Mitch Kapor. That's the same Mitch Kapor who founded Lotus, and um, the ... Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The award goes to "individuals who have made significant and influential contributions to the development of computer-mediated communications or to the empowerment of individuals in using computers and the Internet," according to the blurb.

Two people who were neither founders nor chairmen of the Electronic Frontier Foundation also won Electronic Frontier Foundation awards this year: Professor Ed Felten and Dr Patrick Ball, who founded Benetech ("Technology Serving Humanity").

"I am thrilled to be able to honor Mitch, Ed, and Patrick for their incredible work," said Electronic Frontier Foundation Executive Director Shari Steele. Especially when the work includes founding the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Commiserations to Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founders Barlow and Gilmore for missing out on an Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award this year. If anyone deserves an Electronic Frontier Foundation Award - it's the Electronic Frontier Foundation's founders. But there's always next year, chaps.

As soon as we can, we'll be nominating both founders for 2006, and suggesting a new category, the "Recursion" Award. ®

Related stories

Griffin, Froomkin join EFF board
We're not so inEFFectual [Letters]
Dirty rotten inducers - the law the IT world deserves?
Kapor quits Groove
Kapor's open source spreadsheet for the mind