The 2019 Awards Poll
This was the sixth annual awards poll run by RISCOSitory, along with a survey, on the RISC OS Awards website.
Continuing the policy started for the 2014 poll, while this one was nominally for 2019, the period covered was from November 2018 until December 2019, providing a two month overlap.
The poll was opened for votes much later than intended, on 27th March, 2020, and remained open until 30th June, giving people just over three months to make their choices. In that period, there were just 102 valid entries.
As before, the whole process has run smoothly. The interim votes were accessed on a variety of systems, but a RISC OS computer was used to perform all of the processing and counting, 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 2019 RISC OS Awards Results
Best commercial software
The nominations in this category were:
- Artworks - MW Software
- Games Development Kit - AMCOG Games
- LockScreen - R-Comp
- Prophet - Elesar Ltd (Apricote Studios)
- Recce - Sine Nomine
And the winner, with 29% of the vote, is:
ArtWorks2, from MW Software.
Best non-commercial software
The nominations in this category were:
- CloseHook - Simon Birtwistle
- Launcher - Steve Fryatt
- PipeDream - Stuart Swales / Colton Software
- StopClose - Martin Avison
- Streamer - Raik Fischer
- Transient - Fred Graute
And the winner, with 33% of the vote, is:
PipeDream, from Stuart Swales / Colton Software.
Best game or diversion
The nominations in this category were:
- Doom trilogy (now with Sigil support) - R-Comp
- Manga - Richard Murray
- Star Mine - AMCOG Games
- Super Methane Brothers - Cameron Cawley (port)
And the winner, with 37% of the vote, is:
Manga, from Rick Murray.
Best hardware
The nominations in this category were:
- AMCS WW7 workstation - 3rd Event Technologies
- ARMbook - R-Comp
- IDE Interface Mini Podule - CJE Micro's
- WiFi HAT - Elesar Ltd
And the winner, with 56% of the vote, is:
ARMBook, from R-Comp.
Best solution for backwards compatibility
The nominations in this category were:
- ADFFS - Jon Abbott
- Aemulor - Adrian Lees
- ArcEm - Various
- ArchieEmu - Jan de Boer
- RPCEmu - Matthew and Peter Howkins
- VirtualRiscPC - VirtualAcorn
And the winner, with 45% of the vote, is:
Aemulor, from Adrian Lees
Best new development
The nominations in this category were:
- Acquisition of Impression family of products - RISC OS Developments
- Alpha release of Python 3.8 - Chris Johns
- Easier networking with RPCEmu - Matthew and Peter Howkins
- Migration of the RISC OS sources to GitLab - RISC OS Open Ltd
- Prophet gaining support for Making Tax Digital - Elesar Ltd (Apricote Studios)
- Raspberry Pi 4 - Raspberry Pi Foundation
And the winner, with 23% of the vote, is:
Easier networking with RPCEmu - Matthew and Peter Howkins.
Best show of initiative
The nominations in this category were:
- For taking on the mantle of updating the Impression manual - Chris Hall on behalf of RISC OS Developments
- For releasing Impression Style for free - RISC OS Developments
- For RISC OS Direct - RISC OS Developments with Ident/Wi-Fi Sheep
- For the change of Southwest Show venue - the show's organisers
- For their bounty matching initiatives - RISC OS Open Ltd
And the winner, with 40% of the vote, is:
RISC OS Developments Ltd and Wi-Fi Sheep for RISC OS Direct.
Best website or online resource
The nominations in this category were:
- Acorn News Service
- Archive-online
- ROOL website and forum
- The Icon Bar
- The Stardot forum
- The Wi-Fi Sheep channel on YouTube
And the winner, with 58% of the vote, is:
The RISC OS Open website and forum.
Best publication or offline resource
The nominations in this category were:
- Archive Magazine - Glastonbury Press (Jim Nagel)
- Drag 'n Drop - Christopher Dewhurst
- GAG News - German Archimedes Group
- Impression newsletter - Chris Hall
- New Impression manual - RISC OS Developments and Chris Hall
- The WROCC - Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club
And the winner, with 44% of the vote, is:
Archive magazine, from Glastonbury Press (Jim Nagel)
Best foreign language resource
The nominations in this category were:
And the winner, with 51% of the vote, is:
RISCOS.fr.
Best show or event
The nominations in this category were:
- Acorn World Exhibition
- RISC OS eXperience
- RISC OS London Show
- RISC OS Southwest Show
- Wakefield Acorn and RISC OS Computer Show
And the winner, with 43% of the vote, is:
The 2019 London Show.
Most innovative or interesting project
The nominations in this category were:
- 3d graphics engine - Daryl Dudey
- Evince - Adrian Lees
- RISC OS Cloverleaf project
- RISC OS Direct - RISC OS Developments with Ident/Wi-Fi Sheep
- RockPro64 port - Michael Grunditz
- The web browsers being developed - Leo Noar and Michael Grunditz on behalf of RISC OS Developments
And the winner, with 49% of the vote, is:
The web browsers being developed on behalf of RISC OS Developments by Leo Noar and Michael Grunditz.
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 102 valid voting forms received, only 32 voters entered something for this field (and one voter offered three names, with one third of a vote each - two of whom are amongst the winning three). With so few suggestions overall, there were unsurprisingly a number of people who received just a single vote!
However, the three with the most votes, in reverse order, are:
- In third place, with 7% of the vote: Rob Sprowson.
- In second place, with 13% of the vote: Adrian Lees.
- And in first place, with 29% of the vote: Jeffrey Lee.
Broken cog of the year
The nominations in this category were:
- CJE Micro's - For not attending the Southwest Show again
- RISC OS companies and developers - The plague of lastiminutitis, with show developments and announcements being very last minute.
- RISC OS Open Ltd - For publishing news on their own site and, apparently, nowhere else. Blink and you'll miss it.
- The RISC OS world as a whole - For the typical state of RISC OS related websites, which usually look like they're stuck in the late 1990s and/or aren't updated often enough!
- Vince Hudd - For being so far behind with everything - including this poll (AGAIN!)
And the winner, with 52% of the vote, is:
The RISC OS world as a whole - For the typical state of RISC OS related websites, which usually look like they're stuck in the late 1990s and/or aren't updated often enough!