CeBIT 2009: OpenStreetMap Wins Two Linux New Media Awards

The free Internet geographic mapping service OpenStreetMap won recognition in the Most Innovative Open Source Project category. In his award presenter's speech, Simon Phipps, Sun Microsystems' chief Open Source officer, lamented that up to now his homeland England hadn't had any free cartography material. Michael Buege and Dirk-Lüder Kreie accepted the award for the project and praised the combined work of the 100,000 or so people who contributed to the Geographic Information System (GIS). OpenStreetMap also came away with the coveted Outstanding Contribution to Linux and Open Source award, given consistently every year. The other awards pick up themes of the current conference.

The trophy for the Friendliest Open Source Hardware Vendor went to Intel, with Asus, IBM and Sun also nominated. Award presenter Peter Ganten of LIVE Linux lauded Intel not only for their contributions to the Linux Kernel, but for their advocacy of open standards. Appropriately, Ganten recalled the beginnings of Linux, when Linus Torvalds wrote a kernel for Intel's i386 processor.

Oliver Zendel from the German National Agency for Information Security (BSI) presented the award for the Security category, which core developer Markus Friedl accepted for OpenSSH and for which he gratefully thanked its users.

Special to this conference was the category Mobility, with the award presented by Professor Jean-Pierre Seifert of the Technical University of Berlin to Google's Dan Kegel for the Linux-based Android mobile platform.

Knoppix inventor Klaus Knopper handed over the Best Open Source Programming Language prize, this year hotly disputed among the jury. The distinction went to Python. "The thing can do anything," Knopper expressed. Martin von Löwis of the Python Foundation accepted the award for the Python community.

A jury of over 200 community and industry experts nominated the candidates for the Linux New Media awards and determined the prize winners. The commendations for special accomplishments in Open Source are given by Linux New Media AG, publishers of Linux Magazine Online.