The Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards have been presented to individuals for dedication, innovation, leadership and outstanding contribution to open source.

Winners are selected by a committee, made up of the following: Aaron Leventhal (Senior Engineer, IBM Accessibility Architecture and Development & The Mozilla Accessibility Community), Allison Randal, (The Perl Foundation & O'Reilly - OSCON Co-Chair), Andrew Tridgell (Samba and Rsync), Angela Byron (Drupal), Brady Forest (O'Reilly - Technology Evangelist and Conference Chair), Brian Behlendorf (CollabNet Founder), Chris DiBona (Google, Open Source Programs Manager), Chris Messina (BarCamp, Microformats and Spread Firefox), Danese Cooper (Open Source Diva, Intel), David Ascher (CEO, Mozilla Messaging), David Recordon (Open Platforms Tech Lead, Six Apart & Vice-Chair, The OpenID Foundation), Edd Dumbill (Expectnation & O'Reilly - OSCON Co-Chair), Gervase Markham (Mozilla Project), Karl Fogel (QuestionCopyright.org), Harald Welte (gplviolations.org), Leslie Hawthorn (Google, Program Manager - Open Source), Mark Stone (Executive Producer, Wizards of the Coast), Martin Dougiamas (Moodle), Pamela Jones (Groklaw), Nat Torkington (O'Reilly Radar), Paul Vixie (Internet Systems Consortium), Stefan Taxhet (OpenOffice.org Coordination, Sun Microsystems, Inc.), and Tim O'Reilly (Founder and CEO, O'Reilly Media).

Each year the winners (below) have been invited to be part of the new committee. Stay tuned to the Google Open Source Blog for announcements about 2010.

2009 Google-O'Reilly Open Source Award Winners

• Best Open Source Database Hacker: Brian Aker - Drizzle and MySQL
• Database Jedi Master: Bruce Momjian - PostgreSQL
• Best Community Builder: Clay Johnson - Sunlight Labs
• Best Social Networking Hacker: Evan Prodromou - identi.ca and Laconica
• Best Education Hacker: Penny Leach - Mahara and Moodle

Awards Photos courtesy of Pinar Ozyger/O'Reilly Media.

2008 Google-O'Reilly Open Source Award Winners

• Best Community Amplifier: Chris Messina - BarCamp, Microformats and Spread Firefox
• Best Contributor: Angela Byron - Drupal
• Best Education Enabler: Martin Dougiamas - Moodle
• Best Interoperator: Andrew Tridgell - Samba and Rsync
• Defender of Rights: Harald Welte - gplviolations.org

Awards Photos courtesy of James Duncan Davidson/O'Reilly Media.

2007 Google-O'Reilly Open Source Award Winners

• Best Community Builder: Karl Fogel
• Best FUD Fighter: Pamela Jones
• Best Accessibility Architect: Aaron Leventhal
• Best Strategist: David Recordon 
• Best Outstanding Lifetime Contributions: Paul Vixie
  

Awards Photos courtesy of James Duncan Davidson/O'Reilly Media.

2006 Google-O'Reilly Open Source Award Winners

• Best Legal Eagle: Cliff Schmidt, Apache
• Best Community Activist: Gervase Markham, Firefox
• Best Toolmaker: Julian Seward, Valgrind
• Best Corporate Liaison: Stefan Taxhet, OpenOffice.org
• Best All-around Developer: Peter Lundblad, Subversion

Learn more

Awards Photos courtesy of James Duncan Davidson/O'Reilly Media.

2005 Google-O'Reilly Open Source Award Winners

• Best Communicator: Internet pioneer Doc Searls, co-author of "The Cluetrain Manifesto" and Senior Editor for Linux Journal
• Best Evangelist: Jeff Waugh, Ubuntu Linux and Gnome desktop environment
• Best Diplomat: Geir Magnusson Jr of Apache
• Best Integrator: D. Richard Hipp (SQLite)
• Best Hacker: David Heinemeier Hansson (Ruby on Rails and 37Signals)