Project

OSAwards.eu will establish a European Public Recognition Scheme for Open Source (OS) Software (SW) and Hardware (HW). This system for European Awards will foster interest in contributions, and promote greater integration, utilisation, and exploitation of OS SW and HW assets in Europe by:

• Celebrating Excellence: The European Open Source Awards, guided by an expert European Open Source Academy, will annually recognise outstanding contributions from individuals and projects across Europe.
• Amplifying Impact: The strategically timed EU Open Source Week, coinciding with major European events like FOSDEM, will raise the awards' profile and foster extensive community engagement.
• Building European Expertise: The European OS Academy, in collaboration with the European Commission (EC) and OSAawards.eu, will nominate and select awardees, ensuring the legitimacy and inspiring future generations. It will also drive the OSAwards.eu's skills development strategy.

OSAwards.eu maximises recognition by leveraging existing communities and initiatives; through institution-building it creates a system that ensures enduring impact. The intertwining of recognition (the European OS Awards), legitimacy and skills (the European OS Academy and Skills Strategy), and community engagement (the EU OS Week), cultivates a comprehensive strategy that celebrates excellence, fuels innovation, and advances OS technologies in Europe across society and industrial verticals. In doing so, OSAwards.eu ultimately aims to advance the EU's competitiveness and open strategic autonomy.

Within this project, the Fraunhofer ISI team will develop and propose metrics and means to characterise the adoption and impact of critical OS projects in the areas identified as critical. The task will develop a comprehensive framework for measuring OS activities and impacts to support the work of the involved stakeholders in carrying out the awards, i.e. the members of the EU OS Academy, by providing indicators to shortlist actors, projects, or organisations. The task will build on earlier work on the economic impact of OS in the EU15, but also expand it to further data sources covering the links e.g. to research, innovation via patents, start-ups, and standards.