Open source awards celebrate acceptance in mainstream IT

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Lifetime achievement award to R creator Ross Ihaka

By Computerworld staff | Auckland | Wednesday, 10 November, 2010 | 2 Comments

The IRD, the software development firm Silverstripe and Te Papa were among the winners at the NZ Open Source Awards 2010 held in Wellington last night.

Judge Nathan Torkington says this year’s awards were notable for the diversity of the winners, with open source now being available to school children, taxpayers, crafts people and historians.

Among the winners were the IRD for the Moodle online learning system, Silverstripe for its New Zealand-made CMS that has been downloaded more than 325,000 times internationally, and Te Papa for its use of open source technologies and design to recreate the museum’s photographs and drawings.

Fellow judge Kiwiblog creator David Farrar says open source is “not so much about price or availability, but about innovation and about the ability to take what others have done, customise it and then share that with others”.

The Catalyst Lifetime Achievement in Open Source Award was given to University of Auckland Associate Professor of Statistics Dr Ross Ihaka for being one of the originators of ‘R”, a statistical program that has global significance (see Computerworld article about R earlier this year).

The list of winners is:

Open Source in Government
IRD’s use of Moodle

Open Source in Education
Albany Senior High School

Open Source Use in Business
Ponoko

Open Source Use in the Arts
Ghosts in the Form of Gifts – Te Papa

Open Source Project
SilverStripe

Open Source Advocate
Linux.conf.au organisers Andrew and Suzanne Ruthvern

Open Source Contributor
Tabitha Roder for One Laptop per Child

People’s Choice
Amie McCarron for the Alcoholics Anonymous NZ websites

The University of Auckland Clinton Bedogni Prize for Open Systems
Rob O'Callahan for his significant contributions to Mozilla Firefox and open web standards

The Catalyst Lifetime Achievement in Open Source Award
Dr. Ross Ihaka, for the ‘R’ statistical programing and graphics language

Comments

Correction - Arts Award Ghosts in the form of Gifts was not a Te Papa project - it was an artwork I created independently (although in consultation with Te Papa) as a commission for Massey University, recreating objects that were imagined as missing from the museum's collection. Many of the chosen objects - such as the matau fish hook - are represented multiple times in the collection, so the work deals with issues around multiples, reproductions, and things that may have gone missing, or never entered the collection in the first place.
http://bronwyn.co.nz/projects/gifts.html
Cheers, B
Posted by Bronwyn Holloway-Smith at 10:45:03 on November 10, 2010

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Open Source Use in Arts The winner for the Open Source Use in Arts was Bronwyn Holloway-Smith for creating lost pieces from Te Papa and from pictures creates a 3D render of the item and then prints them via the RepRap machine which is a 3D printer.
Posted by Amber Craig at 10:41:26 on November 10, 2010

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