The 2019 UK Open Source Awards follow hot on the heels of one of the most interesting years Open Source has seen. In 2018 IBM announced its purchase of Redhat for $38billion and Microsoft made its new position on open source clear with the acquisition of Github and its joining the Open Invention Network, committing its patents to open source. This year’s event, organised by SalesAgility and Trustable, at the University of Edinburgh Informatics forum on 12 June 2019 will be a lively afternoon of presentations including Microsoft and the Open Invention Network after which the winners of the 5 Awards will be announced.

Now in its 6th year, The UK Open Source Awards is a non-profit event celebrating significant contributions made by participants in the UK to Open Source technology. The awards will be judged by Jonathan Riddell of the KDE community, Allison Randal and Dawn Foster. All judging is independent of the organisers

The event includes some of Open Source’s best international speakers:

  • The influence of Open Source on all Technology – Allison Randal retiring OSI Board member and Open Stack Foundation Board Member
  • Open Source Innovation within the Public Sector Panel – Terence Eden, Senior Technology Advisor NHS England & Sachiko Muto, CEO Open Forum Europe and Peter Coates, Director, Apperta Foundation
  • Good Corporate Citizens in Open Source- Dawn Foster, Pivotal and Governing Board Linux Foundation CHAOSS project
  • The Journey to Open Source – Stephen Walli Principal Program Manager Microsoft & Keith Bergelt CEO of the Open Invention Network

The evening ceremony keynote will be Nextcloud’s founder and CEO, Frank Karlitschek after which five awards will be presented to outstanding individuals and organisations contributing to Open Source in the UK.

Dale Murray CEO of SalesAgility “As we’ve seen in the past year Open Source adoption continues to grow as more individuals and organisations are putting Open Source at the forefront of their technology strategies. With Open Source we really are in it together and it’s great to help organise this event to celebrate the contributions and achievements of Open Source in the UK”

Amanda Brock CEO of Trustable “The UK Open Source Awards offer a unique opportunity to bring our UK open source and business communities together to celebrate their many successes. We have a number of world class speakers for the day, but thanks to our sponsors the event is zero cost to attend.”

The Open Source Awards and Nominations

There are Awards in 5 categories:

1. Individual Award – for outstanding contributions to open source

2. Company Award – for outstanding contribution to open source either through product development or contributions to projects

3. Public Sector and Third Sector Award – for an outstanding open source project in the UK public sector or third sector.

4. Diversity Award – in recognition of diversity in UK open source

5. Student Award – a cash prize of £1,500 for an outstanding contribution to open source from currently matriculated UK students

Previous winners have included contributors from the Gnome project, Collabora (LibreOffice) and Alfresco.
Nominations close at 5pm Monday 29 April 2019. To nominate for one or all of the award categories please visit span http://opensourceawards.org

The Awards were started by Greg Soper of SalesAgility and are made possible in 2019 by the sponsorship of Microsoft, Collabora, Codethink, Open UK, Open Invention Network, Opus VL, Informatics Forum and NHSX.