The 2015 Awards Poll

This was the third annual awards poll run by RISCOSitory, along with a survey, on the RISC OS Awards website.

Continuing the policy started last year, while the poll was nominally for 2015, the period covered was from November 2013 until December 2014, providing a two month overlap.

The poll was opened for votes on 9th December, 2015, and was closed on 12th February, 2016, giving people just over two months to make their choices. And in that period, there were 161 valid entries - an increase in the number for both previous polls, with the increase on last year being particularly notable.

It seems likely that this was a result of the method used: Whereas last year, voting was via a free-form text field, this year that was combined with a number of nominations, allowing those voting to select one.

As before, the whole process has run smoothly. The votes were initially received on a Windows computer, but then transferred to a RISC OS system, on which all of the processing and counting was carried out, using a combination of a small program written in BBC BASIC and Colton Software's Fireworkz.

And the results of that processing can be found below - congratulations to all the winners!

The 2015 RISC OS Awards Results

Best commercial software

The nominations in this category were:

  • Impression-X (no website) - Computer Concepts' DTP software, now being 32-bitted by Richard Keefe,
  • Ovation Pro - the DTP package from David Pilling,
  • ArtWorks 2 - the vector graphics package originally from Computer Concepts, now from MW Software.
  • SystemDisc - a tool from Piccolo Systems for creating/managing bootable disc images,
  • RiscOSM - the OpenStreetMap-based mapping software from Sine Nomine,
  • Organizer - the personal information manager from North One.

And the winner, with 32% of the vote, is:
RiscOSM, from Sine Nomine.

Best non-commercial software

The nominations in this category were:

  • NetSurf - the cross-platform web browser from the NetSurf developers.
  • GCC - a C/C++ compiler from the GCC team.
  • Otter Browser - Chris Gransden's port of an alternative web browser.
  • RiscLua - the RISC OS version of programming language Lua, from Gavin Wraith.
  • Fireworkz 2 - an integrated word processor and spreadsheet from Stuart Swales/Colton Software.
  • An updated version of Ovation - Beebug's DTP package, thanks to Rick Murray.

And the winner, with 49% of the vote, is:
NetSurf, from the NetSurf Developers.

 

Best game or diversion

The nominations in this category were:

And the winner, with 58% of the vote, is:
Star Fighter 3000, originally from FedNet and now free from Christopher Bazley.

 

Best hardware

The nominations in this category were:

And the winner, with 33% of the vote, is:
The Raspberry Pi 2 from the Raspberry Pi Foundation .

Best solution for backwards compatibility

The nominations in this category were:

And the winner, with 34% of the vote, is:
Aemulor from Adrian Lees/Spellings.net.

 

Best new development

The nominations in this category were:

And the winner, with 41% of the vote, is:
The development of Titanium by Elesar Ltd.

Best show of initiative

The nominations in this category were:

And the winner, with 38% of the vote, is:
Elesar Ltd for developing the Titanium motherboard.

 

Best website or online resource

The nominations in this category were:

And the winner, with 69% of the vote, is:
The RISC OS Open forum and source code repository.

Best publication or offline resource

The nominations in this category were:

And the winner, with 34% of the vote, is:
Archive Magazine, from Abbey Press.

 

Best foreign language resource

The nominations in this category were:

And the winner, with 46% of the vote, is:
RISCOS.fr, from David Feugey.

Best show or event

The nominations in this category were:

And the winner, with 45% of the vote, is:
London 2015, organised by ROUGOL.

 

Most innovative or interesting project

The nominations in this category were:

And the winner, with 51% of the vote, is:
ADFFS from Jon Abbott.

Best overall contributor

This was the one category that didn't have any nominations, and instead relied on those people voting to suggest which individual, team or company they feel deserves recognition as having made a worthy contribution to RISC OS.

Of the 161 valid voting forms received, only 64 voters entered something for this field, and of those 64, one individual was named in almost a third of the entries, with two companies coming second and third with a fifth, and almost a sixth respectively.

The top three, therefore, are:

  • In third place, with 16% of the vote: RISC OS Open Ltd.
  • In second place, with 20% of the vote: R-Comp.
  • In first place, with 31% of the vote: Jeffrey Lee.
 

Broken cog of the year

The nominations in this category were:

And the winner, with 43% of the vote, is:
3QD/VirtualAcorn for being particularly unhelpful towards a customer in need of help.