The European Open Source Academy (EOSA) awarded Greg Kroah-Hartman the 'Excellence in Open Source 2026' award, presented by the European community for outstanding contributions to open source development. Greg is responsible for maintaining the stable and 'staging' branches of the Linux kernel, serves as the maintainer in 16 kernel subsystems, including USB, TTY, and Driver core, and is the creator of openSUSE Tumbleweed, udev, and the Linux driver project. In recent years, Greg has lived in the Netherlands.
In addition to the main award, 4 special recognitions were awarded to 5 participants:
- ‘Business and Impact’ — Frank Karlitschek, creator of the NextCloud cloud platform.
- ‘Community Impact’ — Roberto Di Cosmo, an Italian computer science scholar, creator of the Software Heritage source code archive.
- ‘Community Impact’ — Stefano Zacchiroli, a French researcher and professor, co-founder and scientific director of the Software Heritage archive, three-time leader of the Debian project, and a board member of the Open Source Initiative (OSI).
- ‘Skills and Education’ — Matthew Venn, founder of the TinyTapeout project, which helps in the fabrication of open chips.
- ‘Advocacy and Awareness’ — Jenny Molloy, head of a group at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), founder of the Reagent Collaboration Network project for open exchange of biomaterials, co-author of the Open Material Transfer Agreement, one of the founders of the Open Science Hardware Foundation, and a promoter of open science.
The European Open Source Academy was established with the support of the European Commission to promote and recognize outstanding individuals and organizations involved in the development of open source software and hardware in Europe. Its goal is to advocate for the benefits of open projects, to foster collaboration, and to champion the public and economic value of open software and hardware technologies. The organization is in the process of transforming into an independent nonprofit foundation registered in Belgium.
The award was presented by Daniel Stenberg, president of the European Open Source Academy, author of the curl utility, and a participant in IETF working groups developing HTTP and QUIC protocols. In addition to Daniel, the academy members include:
- Jaromil Denis Roio, author of the first free LiveCD,
- Catharina Maracke, who led the adaptation of Creative Commons licenses to the laws of various countries,
- Isabel Drost-Fromm, participant in the Apache Software Foundation and co-founder of the InnerSource Commons Foundation,
- David Cuartielles, founder of Arduino,
- Jean-Baptiste Kempf, leader of the VideoLAN community,
- Dries Buytaert, founder of Drupal,
- Amandine Le Pape, co-founder of the communication platform Element, which promotes the Matrix protocol,
- Javier Serrano, creator of the Open Hardware Repository and co-author of the CERN Open Hardware License,
- Robert Kaye, founder of MusicBrainz and leader of the MetaBrainz Foundation,
- Lydia Pintscher, head of the German branch of Wikimedia.
Source: opennet.ru
