The annual Open Source Awards are here again. You can nominate and vote for your favourite CMS and other Open Source projects in the Hall of Fame CMS category.

The Open Source Awards are of the same age as Joomla!. The event is held by Packt Publishing to distinguish excellence among Open Source projects. Formerly it was known as the Open Source CMS Award, but it's scope now has a wider range of Open Source projects.

History

Last year Wordpress won the prize, but you'll have to take into account, that since 2008 previous winners were not allowed to join the competition for the Overall Open Source CMS award. That was probably done, because otherwise we would always have the same winners. You know who... Previous winners compete amongst one another in the separate Hall of Fame CMS category designed specifically for them.

When the contest started in 2006, Joomla! was the winner and Drupal second. In 2007 it was the other way around. Since 2008 Drupal and Joomla! compete for the Hall of Fame CMS award. In those two years Drupal ended as number one and Joomla! was on the second place. It is your vote that makes the difference. There are 6 categories. For Joomla! it is mainly the Hall of Fame category where you can show your enthusiasm.

Two votes per category

You can vote twice: in the first round, that ends on September 17, you can nominate your favorite Open Source project in each category to go through to the final stage of voting. The top five projects with the most nominations in each category will go through to that second round. The final voting will begin on September 27. Voting will close on November 5, with the winners announced the week commencing November 15.

The 2010 Award will feature a prize fund of $24,000 with several new categories introduced. While the Open Source CMS Award category will continue to recognize the best content management system, Packt is introducing categories for the Most Promising Open Source Project, Open Source E-Commerce Applications, Open Source JavaScript Libraries and Open Source Graphics Software. CMSes that won the Overall CMS Award in previous years will continue to compete against one another in the Hall of Fame CMS category.

These new categories will ensure that the Open Source Awards is the ultimate platform to recognise excellence within the community while supporting projects both new and old. “We believe that the adaption of the Award and the new categories will provide a new level of accessibility, with the Award recognizing a wider range of Open Source projects; both previous winners while at the same time, encouraging new projects” said Julian Copes, organizer of this year’s Awards.

May I have your votes please...

Packt has opened up nominations for people to submit their favorite Open Source projects for each category at www.PacktPub.com/open-source-awards-home . The top five in each category will go through to the final, which begins in the last week of September. For more information on the categories, please visit Packt’s website www.PacktPub.com/blog/packt’s-2010-open-source-awards-announcement.

About Packt

Packt is not just a publishing company: Packt actively supports Open Source. When they sell a book written on an Open Source project, they pay a royalty directly to that project. With 20 titles about Joomla! they are by far the main supplier of Joomla!-books. Please have a look at there Joomla!-books at www.packtpub.com/books/joomla!.