OSCON:And the winners are...

by Marc Perton Aug 3rd 2005

Proof you can make money with open source software: Here are the winners of the first ever Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards, handed out at the OSCON conference in Portland, Tuesday evening. Sure, the winners only got $5,000 each, but that's more than most open source developers get for their late nights and dedication.

Communicator: Internet pioneer Doc Searls, co-author of "The Cluetrain Manifesto" and a Senior Editor for Linux Journal

Evangelist: Jeff Waugh, who manages to find time to pitch for both Ubuntu Linux and Gnome desktop environment

Diplomat: Geir Magnusson Jr of Apache

Integrator: D. Richard Hipp (SQLite)

Hacker: David Heinemeier Hansson (Ruby on Rails and 37Signals)

Congrats to all the winners! Drinks are on you!

Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

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