In the lead up to the tenth annual OSCON Open Source convention, organisers at O’Reilly and Google are welcoming nominations for their jointly hosted Open Source Awards.

This will be the fourth year of the Open Source Awards, which are granted to individuals on the basis of dedication, leadership, innovation, and collaboration in the development of Open Source software.

Winners are selected by a committee of OSCON organisers from O’Reilly and Google, along with a panel of winners from previous years. Previous winners include Firefox developer Gervase Markham, Internet pioneer Doc Searls, and Australian Open Source evangelist Jeff Waugh.

Held from 21-25 July in Portland, Oregon, OSCON 2008 is expected to bring together more than 2500 members of the open source community to discuss topics such as Linux, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, Mobile, Databases, Desktop Applications, Web Applications, Administration, Security, People, Business, and Emerging Topics.

Having reached the ten-year milestone, OSCON is expected to move from its corporate-focussed evangelistic goals of the past decade to explore technological possibilities of the future.

While the Australian representation at OSCON 2008 currently is unknown, a “decent number” of people from down under are expected to attend, according to Leslie Hawthorn, Google’s program manager for Open Source.

“It's [The Australian Open Source environment] very fertile,” she said. “There are many great developers who live here like Andrew Tridgell. It's a very active community and very focused.”

Hawthorn represents Google on a panel of judges for the Open Source Awards, alongside colleague Chris DiBona, as well as O’Reilly Media’s Allison Randal and Tim O’Reilly.

Touting OSCON as an opportunity for Google to connect with the Open Source community, Hawthorn said that the awards have traditionally been popular with conference attendees.

“It's a great opportunity for us to continue reaching out to our colleagues in the Open Source community,” she said. “We have a really deep commitment to this area. We will enjoy doing the annual Google Open Source update to talk about all our open source programs and open source activities.”

More information about the Open Source Awards 2008 is available from Allison Randal’s blog posting to the O’Reilly Radar. Nominations close on 15 May.