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Celebrating New Zealand’s contribution and advocacy for free and open source software

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1 Foreword

2–3 Open Source use in BusinessThis award recognises outstanding use of open source in the public sector in New Zealand.

4–5 Open Source use in GovernmentThis award recognises outstanding use of open source in business in New Zealand.

6–7 Open Source Software ProjectThis award recognises the free and open source software that has had the biggest positive impact on New Zealand in the past two years.

8–9 Open Source ContributorThis award recognises outstanding contributions by a New Zealand individual or organisation to one or more open source projects.

10–11 Open Source use in Education, Social Services & YouthThis award recognises outstanding use of open source in education, social services and youth in New Zealand.

12–13 Open Source use in ScienceThis award recognises outstanding use of free and open source software to make scientific research and data accessible to all.

14–15 Open Source use in the ArtsThis award recognises use of free and open source for creative endeavours of the arts in New Zealand.

16–18 People’s Choice AwardThis award recognises the individual or organisation that the free and open source community, at large, feels is worthy of public acknowledgement. Winner was determined by public online voting.

19 Clinton Bedogni Prize for Open SystemsClinton Bedogni Prize for Open Systems administered by the University of Auckland Department of Computer Science.

20 Previous winners

22 Award sponsors

Celebrating New Zealand’s contibution and advocacy for free and open source software

New Zealand Open Source Awards 2018 1Creative Commons: Attribution-Share Alike (BY-SA)Design: Catalyst IT Limited www.catalyst.net.nz

The 2018 New Zealand Open Source Awards takes place in anenvironment where, after many decades, open source hasgained a pre-eminent status in the software world and beyond.Open source powers the Internet, our phones, the cloud, theInternet of Things and is increasingly the default choice inenterprises around New Zealand and the rest of the world.

The range and quality of this years’ nominations is testament tothe vibrancy and diversity of our communities. This depth andbreadth of achievement is nothing short of impressive. We arefortunate to have so many people here using open sourcetechnology and philosophy to deliver amazing technical, socialand creative projects.

As is the case every year, the quality and consistency of thosenominations presented the judges with a welcome problem:how to decide which of these projects and people toacknowledge as particularly deserving of singling out for theprizes. While the judges reached consensus on all of theAwards, we feel that every one of the finalists deservesrecognition for the positive contribution they have made toNew Zealand's open source community.

Don ChristieNZOSA Panel of Judges

FOREWORD

New Zealand Open Source Awards 2018Finalists

2

Open Source use in Business

Sparks Interactivefor Sector.org.nz open source product platform

In 2015, Dave Sparks made a commitment tobring the web development and consultingwork done by his company, SparksInteractive, into the open source community.Sparks decided to publish their Drupal baseinstall profile, Sector, as a Drupal distribution.

The Sector D8 distribution published in 2018is an excellent example of how working in theopen and contributing back to the opensource community can improve both opensource products and business processes.Becoming an active contributor in an existingcommunity - in this case Drupal.org -advances the community as a whole. Many ofthe issues resolved by Sector are publishedas patches and available to other Drupalprojects, or have been committed to the codebase of Drupal modules.

sector.org.nzsparksinteractive.co.nz


3

SilverStripe Ltdfor The Common Web Platform 2.0

The Common Web Platform (CWP) providesa feature-rich content management system,hosting, backup, disaster recovery, onlinecode repository, 24/7 Service Desk, co-fundeddevelopment pool and proactive securitypatching.

CWP is introducing cutting edge technologiesinto the government landscape and helpingto raise the bar on customer focusedwebsites and greater web accessibility. Thereare now more that 50 government agenciesand over 230 websites and intranets usingCWP. This is delivering enhanced agility toagencies. improved procurement processesto the sector, and is allowing agencies tocreate new sites quickly and roll out changescontinuously. It also leads to cost savings astechnology, designs and legal contracts areshared.

cwp.govt.nzsilverstripe.org

The Catalyst Cloud teamfor major new developments in the OpenStack community

The Catalyst Cloud team lead an open sourceproject called Qinling that is now the officialServerless/function as a service forOpenStack. They have also improved theintegration between Kubernetes andOpenStack, making it easy for people tolaunch and manage Kubernetes clusters onthe Catalyst Cloud.

Function as a Service is one of the mostexciting advancements of cloud computing,but it is often associated with vendor lock indue to proprietary APIs. The work done bythe Catalyst Cloud allows people to run aservice similar to AWS Lambda oninfrastructure of their own choosing.

All these services are open source and havean open standard API.

catalystcloud.nzopenstack.org


4

Open Source use in Government

The partnership between the Ministry ofSocial Development (MSD) and Concordion indeveloping Cubano, an open source softwaretesting automation framework that putspeople and readability first, and improves thequality of life for developers, testers andbusiness users. The move to open source byMSD is indicative of the Ministry’scommitment to deliver quality digital serviceswhilst being responsible with taxpayermoney. Building the test automationframework and enabling externalcontributions moves the framework into anarena where repeatable use createsdurability and quality. Avoidance ofproprietary solutions means the frameworkwill be enhanced with time rather thandegraded or requiring costly upgrades.

github.com/concordion/cubano

The Ministry of SocialDevelopmentfor moving to the open source test automationframework; Cubano


5

The Electoral Management System is criticalto the conduct of general elections and by-elections. It provides Electoral Commissionstaff at the national office and at electorateheadquarters around the country the abilityto manage and administer a wide-range offunctions required to conduct elections, by-elections and referenda.

The nearly twenty year old system thatadministers every aspect of an election, fromrecruiting staff and payroll, through to thevote count and publication, was completelyrewritten in open source tools. Delivering amodern, usable platform that supports theCommission’s ability to continue to evolveand deliver the core functionality for ourdemocracy.

electionresults.govt.nz

A collaborative project across central andlocal government led by the Department ofInternal Affairs, this project moved the RatesRebate act into an accessible modern form -reducing the time needed to access theservice.

This was an example of government workingentirely openly. The project re-used existingtools and systems, it opened it's APIs to thegeneral public (and ran hackathon events andblog posts to show this to people), and theproject released all code to github in realtime. The end product reduced the timeneeded to get a rates rebate, and also madethe system accessible to disabled people whopreviously could not read the paper formsrequired in the process.

ratesrebates.services.govt.nz

The New Zealand ElectoralCommissionfor the Election Management Systemredevelopment

The Service Innovation Labfor the Rates Rebates Alpha, Family ServicesDirectory API and for working openly &collaboratively


6

Open Source Software Project

Ackamafor the Online Dictionary of New ZealandSign Language

New Zealand Sign Language is an officiallanguage of our country. Like Te Reo Māori itis important for our nation to fosterunderstanding and use of the language to bean inclusive society. Victoria University ofWellington have stepped forward as theprovider of NZSL Dictionary - an onlinedictionary website for NZSL with signs inEnglish and Te Reo Māori with image andvideo references for how to make each sign.

The open nature of the project will allowothers to contribute bug fixes and newfeatures as well as enabling other countriesto take the website, apps or both and usethem for their own systems. There have beensignificant inquiries from other countries intothe dictionary and web app and this enablesreuse in a generous manner.

nzsl.vuw.ac.nzackama.com


7

Radomirs Cirskis & Roshan Pawarfor the New Zealand ORCID Hub

The Faucet Foundationfor the Faucet SDN Controller project

ORCID is the Open Researcher & ContributorID, a global non-profit foundation. Theirmission is creating a world in which all whoparticipate in research, scholarship, andinnovation are uniquely identified andconnected to their contributions andaffiliations, across disciplines and borders.

The New Zealand ORCID Hub has open-source principles at the core of its ethos andits design. It has been created in a fashionthat enables it to be adopted and used by anyother research consortium in the world.Taking an open-source approach has enabledsignificant collaboration throughout the NewZealand Research, Science, and Innovationsystem, and directly with the ORCIDFoundation and other international partners.

royalsociety.org.nz/orcid-in-new-zealand/new-zealand-orcid-consortium/who-is-involved-with-the-new-zealand-orcid-consortium/new-zealand-orcid-hub

Faucet is an OpenFlow controller for multi-table OpenFlow 1.3 switches.

REANNZ has been instrumental in the initialcode base creation and ongoingimprovement, utilisation, testing anddeployment of FAUCET in New Zealand. Theyhave not only been the drivers of the codebase with an internal development team buthave worked with an international teamincluding Google, Tokyo University, ESNet andmany others to share Faucet globally.

REANNZ uses FAUCET on its internal networkand this allows them to manage and deploy avery efficient and cost-effective network butalso supports the NZ Government as genuineworld leaders in this disruptive SoftwareDefined Network technology.

faucet.nz


8

Open Source Contributor

Neil Cresswellfor development of the PortainerSoftware solution

Neil is the driving force behind thedevelopment of the Portainer softwaresolution, an open source managementtoolset for adopting, deploying and managingDocker container technology.

In just two years Portainer has beendownloaded in excess of 380 Million timesfrom the Docker repository and has morethat 8200 stars on Github. It is a fantastic Kiwiopen source solution, with a substantialglobal reach, meteoric user growth and ahighly supportive user community.

portainer.io

Desley Simmondsfor community management of theTotara Government User Group

Since starting the Government Totara UserGroup in 2012, Desley has run the user groupwithout any formal authority but with the fullsupport of the community. She hassuccessfully balanced the incorporation ofcompeting vendors to contribute to thecommunity without ceding control orpermitting the group to become a salesplatform. She effectively encouragesindividuals to develop further, directly andthrough the community, and has beenparticularly successful in supporting womenentering this field.


9

Robert Lyonfor contributions to the Mahara Project

Victoria Spagnolofor contributions to the Drupal Projectand Drupal Migrate

Robert has worked on the Mahara project forover 5 years now, starting first as a developerand for the last few years as the projectTechnical Lead. Under his steady hand theproject has released 4 solid feature releases.

Robert also takes a lot of time to mentornewcomers, both at his place of employmentand in the wider community. He is generouswith his time and gives great constructivecriticism when reviewing patches. Previous tohis work on Mahara, Robert has alsocontributed to other open source projectssuch as Koha, Kete and Kea. Robert has spentover 10 years working on or with open sourcesoftware, which is a remarkable achievementin itself.

mahara.org

Victoria is a major contributor to Drupal’score migration support and is the leadmaintainer of the Commerce Migrate andCommerce Export modules, both opensource projects in the Drupal ecosystem.

Victoria has been a contributor to the Migrateprojects for some years now, to the benefit ofa large number of sites worldwide. As well asbeing a code contributor, Victoria has showna commitment to supporting users of theMigrate toolkit through her presence in theDrupal community, and through effort incontributing to documentation of the Migrateprojects and related tools.

drupal.org/u/quietone


10

Open Source use in Education,Social Services and Youth

Amber Craig, Brenda Wallace &Hīria Te Rangifor Whare Hauora sensors

An Aotearoa where your home does notmake you sick.

Whare Hauora has a purpose to measure thehousing environments for New Zealanders, toempower and educate residents on how theycan make changes to their environment for ahealthier home. Through using open sourcesoftware and hardware they aim to empowercommunities to create their own Wharesensors and to support them to understandthe effects their home may be having on theirhealth. For free.

They have developed a consumer version of aWhare sensor kit, with a social good model of"buy one, gift one."

They also aim to provide aggregated, nonpersonal data that shows the need, or not, forchange in New Zealand's building standards.

wharehauora.nz


11

Auckland University ofTechnology Libraryfor Tuwhera

Lillian Hetet-Owen from the HetetSchool of Māori Artfor giving women prisoners the opportunityto weave their way to Freedom

In 2016, AUT launched Tuwhera, an openaccess scholarly publishing platform builtusing Open Journal System. Tuwhera hasbecome host to eight peer reviewed journals,most with strong indigenous connections andkaupapa. It has also become an incubator tonurture emerging academics and providealternative avenues for publishing research.

Their ongoing efforts, both in providing aquality platform and in offering training,support, and metadata provision, make thema powerhouse in the New Zealand openaccess scene. Within the University, thephilosophies of openness demonstrated inTuwhera have been recognised andchampioned by the Library Executive andmade their way into principle strategicdocuments. This leadership in opennessresonates throughout the communitiesbehind the publications Tuwhera supports.

tuwhera.aut.ac.nz

Lillian Hetet-Owen’s had a vision of givingopportunities to the women prisoners of NewZealand through access to their onlineweaving courses so they could have tradeableskills when they were released.

To achieve this, Lillian had to create an onlinemembership site that an organisation withthe highest levels of security consciousness,Corrections, would accept into its facilities.

Using Drupal as an integrated platform forcontent management, e-commerce andcustomer relationship management, Lillian’sonline school has been able to partner with asignificant government organisation andachieve some of their social and educationalobjectives. The trial for the CorrectionsDepartment of New Zealand began somemonths ago with 30 students.

hetetschoolofmaoriart.com


12

Open Source use in Science

Kea Sightings Projectfor the Kea Database

David Winterfor contributions to open source softwareand open science

Reproducibility is central to the scientificmethod, but results are not oftenreproduced. This is particularly true in areasof research which process very large datasets as is the case with a typical billions ofDNA bases in genomics science. To havereproducible analyses one needs to haveaccess to data (open data), the source code ofthe software (open source) and all of theinformation regarding how the software wasrun (open methodology). Proprietarysoftware generate results which are notnecessarily reproducible by other scientists /other tools.

David has contributed to the reproducibilityof computational analyses by: developingsoftware under open source licenses,contributing to open source projects,publishing under Creative Commons licenses,and teaching others how to do the same.

david-winter.info

The Kea Sightings project has created asystem - keadatabase.nz - for tracking thewell being of individual Kea, (the threatenednative NZ alpine parrot). It is designed tosupport citizen science, through data APIs,and public engagement in the plight of thisamazing, beloved, cheeky, and sadly,endangered, bird.

This is an excellent example of free and opensource software being used to advanceconservation in New Zealand, a naturalcombination, leveraging one community tohelp build another, with mutual benefit.

keadatabase.nz


13

MetOcean Solutionsfor Wavespectra: an open source library forprocessing ocean wave data

The Software Carpentry Projectfor Software Carpentry Communities across NewZealand

MetOcean has recently released this scientificprocessing library as open source toencourage science and community aroundocean wave analysis.

Wavespectra is a powerful collection of toolsto ingest, process and write spectra incommon formats. It allows robust calculationof common integrated spectral waveparameters such as wave height, period anddirection, as well as partitioning the wavespectra using different methods to separatewind sea from swells.

metocean.co.nz/news/2018/4/12/new-open-source-library-for-processing-ocean-wave-spectra

The Carpentries is an internationally activenon-profit organization that brings skillsworkshops to research communities aroundthe world. They train researchers to teachcomputational skills needed to do dataintensive research using open source lessons.They have 2,000 instructors from 39.

The Software Carpentry workshops is aimedat raising awareness and developing softwareskills in the research community. This iscrucial to bring researchers' ability to producethe code associated with their research andunderstand the advantages of Open Sourceprogramming as part of their research cycle.The intention is that tools for research can beshared within and outside the researchcommunity to increase the openness,transparency, integrity, and reproducibility ofresearch.

software-carpentry.org/lessons


14

Open Source use in the Arts

Matt McKegg - LoopDrop Jsfor contribution to open source music toolsand performance

Matt McKegg has been working on a range ofopen source tools and learning resources formaking music in the browser and connectingto popular MIDI interfaces. He’s gained afollowing in the international JavaScriptcommunity through not only his software buthis teaching and his live DJ performancesusing his own creations. He recentlyperformed around Europe. His main softwareis called LoopDrop.

Matt has been exploring the cutting edge ofwhat can be done in browser with audio formany years. He's able to bridge the gapbetween code and creativity bringing aunique open source based musicalperformance to many events locally andinternationally.

loopjs.com


15

Wellington Independent ArtsTrustfor Urban Dream Brokerage

Wellington Irish Sessionfor preserving and opening traditionalIrish music

The UDB utilised the networks of the brokersand advisors for the benefit of hundreds oftheatre, art, community and social enterpriseprojects in order to allow for free or verycheap access to city sites that wouldotherwise have required rental. This was anovel and unique offering for both theprojects, the property owners and the city ora town. Projects run from between two daysand 5 years.

For the last 5 years UDB provided a physicalopen sourcing service of vacant city sites;creating spaces for 61 art and communityprojects in Wellington; 26 projects inDunedin; 12 in Porirua and 6 in Masterton.The UDB gave reassurance to propertyowners about the safe care of theirproperties while freeing up the city to thosewho wouldn’t otherwise gain access to CBDretail and office sites.

urbandreambrokerage.org.nz

Irish traditional music is community-basedmusic. The Wellington Irish session has built awebsite of resources for learning Irish music.Many of the of the resources are licensedunder a creative commons licence, and theframework has been made available underan open source licence, so that other groupsare able to use it. It provides a basis wherebeginners are able to play the tunes in apublic environment. This supportive andinclusive approach has encouraged thediversity of participation, with an increase inwomen and younger players.

The website was conceived of as an opensource project, to ensure that the intellectualproperty could not be captured, and toencourage the development of similarwebsites by other groups. It was alsoimportant to allow for the reuse of creativecommons content.

wellington.session.nz


16

People's Choice Award

Danny Adairfor ongoing leadership and supportof the Python community in NZ

Clemens Zeidlerfor Fejoa: The Portable Privacy-Preserving Cloud

Fejoa is a data storage and data sharingsolution that allows user to store their datalocally or in the cloud. Fejoa gives users theflexibility to store their data at a serviceprovider of their choice and doesn't lockthem to a single provider. Users can sharetheir data with other users at the same or adifferent service provider.

Moreover, Fejoa makes it easy to migratedata between different providers withoutaffecting data accessibility for other users, i.e.friends can transparently access shared dataafter it has been migrated to a new serviceprovider. Fejoa is fully open source and isbased on peer reviewed research conductedat the University of Auckland. Privacy is a keyaspect of Fejoa and all data is stored securelyand encrypted in the CloudEFS file system.

fejoa.org/fejoapage

Danny founded the NZ Python User Groupand has invested a significant amount of timeand effort over the intervening years inpromoting Python and its community in NZ.He has been a key contributor in organisingconferences and committee meetings toensure that Python has been able to flourishhere.

python.nz


17

Kesara Rathnayakefor the Deep Dreamer artistic AI project

Michael Proper Chairman ofClearFoundationfor ClearOS by ClearFoundation

Deep dreamer is a free open sourcecommand line program that can be used toartistic AI generated images. It's a computervision program which generates imagesbased on how a certain neural networkvisualizes a given image. The project wasbased on and inspired by GoogleDeepdream. Deep dream enables artists togenerate deep dreams easily, based on twopopular ANN models and gives artists abilityto generate Animated GIF creation and videocreation in MP4 format.

deepdreamer.fq.nz

ClearOS is a Linux-based and open sourceoperating system for IT professionals that isbased on CentOS and enhanced to make iteaser to manage IT resources by combiningCloud, Server, Network and Gateway layersinto one system. In the past, running IT for asmall organization required the purchase ofmultiple servers or appliances then paying tolicense software from multiple vendors.ClearOS allows consolidation of all IT servicesand software from one vendor onto a singleserver. ClearOS was built by theClearFoundation to be a simple, secure, andaffordable way for small businesses, schools,and non-profit organisations to manage ITresources.

clearfoundation.co.nz


18

People's Choice Award (continued)

Whare Hauora sensors projectfor Whare Hauora Sensors

An Aotearoa where your home does notmake you sick.

Whare Hauora has a purpose to measure thehousing environments for New Zealanders, toempower and educate residents on how theycan make changes to their environment for ahealthier home. Through using open sourcesoftware and hardware they aim to empowercommunities to create their own Wharesensors and to support them to understandthe effects their home may be having on theirhealth. For free.

They have developed a consumer version of aWhare sensor kit, with a social good model of"buy one, gift one."

They also aim to provide aggregated, nonpersonal data that shows the need, or not, forchange in New Zealand's building standards.

wharehauora.nz

The Stencila Projectfor The Stencila software enabling reproducibleresearch

Stencila provides a set of open-sourcesoftware components enabling reproducibleresearch within the tool of your choice.Stencila allows you to write reproducibledocuments containing interactive sourcecode using the interfaces you are mostfamiliar with. Stencila components can becombined in various ways and plugged intoexisting reproducible infrastructure.

Nokome Bentley is working on the bleedingedge of researcher collaboration. Closing thegap between 'coders' and 'clickers'(spreadsheet users). This has deepimplications for inter-researcher, and inter-lab, collaboration, as well as shining a light onthe future of research communications inpublishing, and the holy grail ofreproducability.

stenci.la


19

Clinton Bedogni Prize for Open Systems

Endowned by the Bedogni family, the Clinton Bedogni Prize recognises world-class work in open systemsand open source projects and research. It is designed to reward the New Zealander from industry oracademia who has made the greatest contibution to open systems in the past two years.

Dr. Hilary OliverNIWA

Dr. Richard LobbUniversity of Canterbury

Hilary is a Senior Research Software Engineerat NIWA. He leads the development of theopen source Cylc package, which orchestratesjobs on large distributed computer systemswhere tasks need to be run in a cyclic fashion,such as in weather forecasting. It is now inuse at over 20 high profile meteorologicaland climate science sites on five continents.

Richard is a computer science teachingbedrock in NZ, having taught at Canterburyand Auckland for decades. His most famousopen source project is Coderunner, a web-based tool used to teach programming. Tensof thousands of computer science students inNZ and overseas use it each year to enter andtest their code before submitting it forautomated assessment.

Eion is a Senior Developer at Optometrix inChristchurch. His specialty is in reverseengineering and opening closed sourceprotocols so they can be used by open sourcesoftware, leading to a number of Facebook,Skype and Mattermost plugins, which havehad tens of thousands of users.

Clemens is a former Bedogni Fellow and nowworks as a Research Fellow at Unitec. He is amajor contributor to the Haiku OS, with auser community in the hundreds ofthousands, and has had a significant hand ina number of other open source projects (e.g.,Fejoa and Lablet), in particular in the area ofuser and hardware interfaces.

Dr. Clemens ZeidlerUnitec

Eion RobbOptometrix

New Zealand Open Source Awards 201820

Previous winners

Award category 2010 2012 2014 2016

Business Ponoko Totara LMS DiamondAge &MindKits forDiamondMind

Catalyst Cloud

Government IRD use ofMoodle

GNS Science Common WebPlatform

DigitalNZ andNational Library ofNZ for DigitalNZ

Education Albany SeniorHigh

Manaiakalani Catalyst OpenSource Academy

Software project SilverStripe Piwik fyi.org.nz OneRNG

Contributor Tabitha Roder Grant McLean Andrew Bartlett Eileen McNaughton

CommunityOrganisation orSocial Service

Soup Hub andWCC ComputerHubs

UC CEISMIC

Education, SocialService & Youth

WCC ComputerHubs

Science GNS Science AucklandBioengineeringInstitute

The CacophonyProject

Arts/Creativity Ghosts in theForm of Gifts

Whisper DownThe Lane

Birgit Bachler Make/Use

People's Choice Amie McCarron Sofa Statistics Rob Elshire Brent WoodPriv-O-Matic

Special Award Andrew &Susanne Ruthven

WarringtonSchool

Michael Kerrisk

New Zealand Open Source Awards 2018Acknowledgements 21

Congratulations to all of this year’s finalists and many thanks to the judges and sponsors.

SponsorsPLATINUM SPONSORS

SILVER SPONSORS

BRONZE SPONSORS

catalyst.net.nz internetnz.nz

itp.nz nzoss.org.nz section6.nz

catalystcloud.nz redhat.com

ackama.com nzrise.org.nz silicon.co.nz

silverstripe.com

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