Community Innovation Awards Program

Sun Microsystems made a commitment to free and open source software and in doing so has contributed billions of dollars, as well as more code under open source licenses than any other organization in the public or private sector.

In support of our commitment, Sun is pleased to announce a $1 Million Open Source Community Innovation Awards Program which will foster innovation and recognize the most interesting initiatives within open source communities worldwide. Sun and the six open source communities have announced details on how developers can participate in the individual programs. Each community has its own contest rules and judging criteria which can be viewed on their respective websites, linked below.

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The OpenSolaris Community Awards program features a $100,000 open call for innovation and a $75,000 student research program. The awards will recognize outstanding or innovative contributions to the OpenSolaris community and the OpenSolaris ecosystem at large, with twenty five $1,000 second prizes, three $15,000 first prizes, and a $30,000 grand prize. The student research program will fund student-professor research collaborations, focused on OpenSolaris, at universities across the globe. Participate now The OpenSPARC Project Awards program will include eight categories and award amounts, ranging from $20,000 to $35,000 for the grand prize winner. The OpenSPARC awards program will be judged by a jury panel of industry experts selected from within the OpenSPARC community and representing a diverse background of expertise and experience. Participate now The OpenOffice.org Community Innovation Program is intended to foster community development and innovation. All projects must be able to be subsequently worked on by the community and all work must be abide by OpenOffice.org's license scheme. There are six categories for this program: Technical, Community, Tools, OpenDocument Format (ODF), Documentation and Special. Participate now

The Dreams of Reality: NetBeans Innovator's Grants will help developers bring their NetBeans related projects to life through a grant-based work program. Open source developers can submit project ideas ranging from extra NetBeans modules, fixing Integrated Development Environment issues and bugs, documentation and adoption material, translations, NetBeans platform applications, and more. Participate now Project GlassFish The GlassFish Awards Program (GAP) is designed to encourage and recognize innovation and community participation with GlassFish-related activities and contributions. The project this year encourages local activities from communities throughout the world, software contributions, bug reports, blueprints or documentation and course ware. Participate now OpenJDK Community Innovator's Challenge is intended to encourage and reward developers working together in solving key problems, initiating new innovative projects that promote new uses for the code, developing curricula and training, and porting the OpenJDK code base to new platforms. The OpenJDK challenge will run in two phases: the proposal phase and the project phase. Participate now