The New Zealand Open Source Awards has announced its finalist list. The judges were impressed by the high calibre of candidates and how far many of the companies and projects had come in the past two years. Entries for the ‘Open Source Use in Business’ Award were particularly strong.

This year there are 31 finalists across eight categories.

SilverStripe, the R Project and the IRD make the finalist list twice, while Tabitha Roder is shortlisted in three categories. The ‘Open Source Use in Business’ and ‘Open Source Project’ Awards were the two most entered categories.

This year’s shortlist reflects the diversity and innovation of open source projects today. Don Christie, Judge and Director of Catalyst IT, which champions the Awards, says: “The popularity of the Business and Project categories reflects the growing foothold open source has in the business world. People are really beginning to see open source not only as a viable alternative to proprietary software, but also as a complementary option to run alongside existing and new software choices.

“This is contrasted by inventive use of open source in the Arts category, which showcases the many possible ways open source software can feed innovation and creativity.”

The Awards are about raising the profile of open source and free software in general and from Thursday 7th October the public can vote for the winner of the ‘People’s Choice’ Award at www.nzosa.org.nz/nominations.

The winners of the Awards will be announced at a gala event on Tuesday 9th November in Wellington. Mark Cubey, Producer of Radio New Zealand’s ‘Saturday Morning with Kim Hill’ will be the MC and Jay Daley, CEO of the New Zealand Registry Service, will be a guest speaker.

The full list of finalists is:

Open Source in Government
- IRD’s use of Moodle
- NIWA Ocean Survey 20/20 Portal
- DigitalNZ’s initiative to make New Zealand digital content easy to find, share and use IRD’s Online Consultation

Open Source in Education
- Albany Senior High School
- Tabitha Roder for One Laptop per Child (OLPC)
- R Project – a programming language and software environment for statistical computing and graphics Paul Seiler for contributions to MLE and OERNZ

Open Source Use in Business
- Ponoko – the hub of a global personal manufacturing eco-system that brings together creators, digital fabricators, materials suppliers and buyers to make almost anything
- SilverStripe – a New Zealand-made CMS that has been downloaded more than 325,000 times globally in less than four years
- MusicHype – an online music venue that uses a custom built 'Appreciation Engine'
- Adaxa – the Adaxa Suite of combined ERP, CRM, Document Management, VoIP, CMS and BI tools

Open Source Use in the Arts
- Ghosts in the Form of Gifts – the use of open source technologies and design to recreate some of the lost treasures of the Te Papa collection from photographs and drawings
- Libsparrow – an artwork entirely based on open source software that has been on show at the Dowse Art Gallery
- Speed of Sound – a music visualisation installation using open source

Open Source Project
- SilverStripe – a New Zealand-made CMS that has been downloaded more than 325,000 times globally in less than four years
- Kete – a product that enables communities to collaboratively build their own digital libraries, archives and repositories
- R Project – a programming language and software environment for statistical computing and graphics

Open Source Advocate
- Linux.conf.au organisers Andrew & Suzanne Ruthven
- Tabitha Roder for One Laptop per Child (OLPC)
- Software Freedom Day organisers Jayne Wallis & Ruth McDavitt

Open Source Contributor
- Tabitha Roder for One Laptop per Child (OLPC)
- Eion Robb for Pidgin
- Resolve Digital’s contribution of the Refinery CMS to the Ruby on Rails community
- Gource – a tool for visualising the history and development of software projects

People’s Choice
(Vote for the winner of this category from 7th October by visiting www.nzosa.org.nz/nominations.)
- Mark Osborne, Albany Senior High School
- Lianne Dalziel, MP, for her work as Chair of the Commerce Select Committee
- DaviCal – a server for calendar sharing
- Amie McCarron for the Alcoholics Anonymous NZ websites
- NZOSS Public Sector Remix – a project to demonstrate the viability of free open source software on public sector desktops - The Tumanako Project – produces components for several high-power electric motor and battery applications