The NZ Open source Awards 2010 aim to reward the most innovative in New Zealand’s open source software. The awards were announced at a gala event attended by more than 200 people at the Intercontinental Wellington last night.

Winners included the IRD’s Moodle online learning system, content management system SilverStripe, personal production hub Ponoko, the open source future of education Albany Senior High School and art project by Bronwyn Holloway-Smith (commissioned by Massey University), Ghosts in the Form of Gifts.

Annie McCarron won the People’s Choice award for her work on the Alcoholics Anonymous websites, while Tabitha Roder won the Open source Contributor award and Linux.conf.au organisers Andrew and Suzanne Ruthvern won in the Open source Advocate category.

The winner of the University of Auckland’s Department of Computer Science Clinton Bedogni Prize for Open Systems, worth $10,000, was Rob O'Callahan for his contributions to Mozilla Firefox and open web standards.

The Catalyst Lifetime Achievement in Open source Award, was given to University of Auckland Associate Professor of Statistics Dr. Ross Ihaka.

Judge and open source advocate Nathan Torkington, said, “Gone are the days when open source software existed only for open source developers.”

“The diversity of the awards and winners show that New Zealand is holding its own with international trends. Ponoko and ‘Ghosts in the Form of Gifts’ reflect a change in manufacturing, from mass production to ‘my production’ and the focus on education with One Laptop per Child (OLPC) and Albany Senior High School reflects the growing importance and use of open source in education around the world.”

The awards were sponsored by Platinum sponsors Catalyst IT and InternetNZ, Gold sponsors Red Hat and the New Zealand Open source Society, and Silver sponsors OSS, Egressive, SilverStripe,

Squiz and 3Months.