Packt Publishing

Accepting nominations since mid-July, Packt Publishing announced this week the finalists for its 2008 Open Source CMS Awards. Final voting began on Sept. 1 and runs through Oct. 20.

This is the third year for the awards, which are designed to “encourage, support, recognize, and reward” popularity and quality in open source content management systems. The finalists for each of the four main categories are as follows:

Overall Open Source CMS Award Finalists

• DotNetNuke
• Drupal
• Joomla
• Plone
• TYPOlight

Most Promising Open Source CMS Finalists

• CMS Made Simple
• ImpressCMS
• MiaCMS
• MemHT
• SilverStripe

Best PHP Open Source CMS Finalists

• CMS Made Simple
• Drupal
• eZ Publish
• Joomla
• Xoops

Best Other Open Source CMS Finalists

• dotCMS
• DotNetNuke
• mojoPortal
• Plone
• Umbraco

In addition to awards for the systems themselves, an Open Source CMS MVP Award will be given to an outstanding individual contributor. The winners in each category will be determined by a panel of four judges whose votes will be combined with those from the public. Announcements of the winners will be staggered:

Oct. 27: Open Source CMS MVP
Oct. 28: Best Other (non-PHP based) Open Source CMS
Oct. 29: Best PHP Open Source CMS
Oct. 30: Most Promising Open Source CMS
Oct. 31: Overall Open Source CMS Award

The project team for the overall winner gets a prize of $5,000, with an additional $15,000 in prizes going to winners and runners-up other categories.

To learn more about each of the projects and cast your vote, visit Packt Publishing’s finalist page.

Over the past few years, eZ Systems have made a name for themselves with eZ Publish, their open source content management software. They hit the 2.5 million download mark earlier this year, and show no signs of slowing down. As announced last week, eZ Publish is a finalist for Packt Publishing’s 2008 Open Source CMS Awards. It’s an honor to be nominated, goes the old saying, but it’s even better to win, and voting on Packt Publishing’s website is open until mid October.

In addition to the free open-source version of their content management software, eZ Systems offers a number of licensing options, some of which include a technical support subscription. That’s apparently where the bulk of their revenue comes from, and they announced this past week that they enjoyed 583% growth in new subscription sales with a renewal rate of over 90% for the first half of 2008. These are incredible numbers and have given eZ Systems two profitable quarters in a row, their first ever.

Finally, I wanted to mention the release of eZ Publish 4.0.1, 3.10.1, and 3.9.5, various versions of their flagship content management system. Although they include just a handful of enhancements, these releases focus mainly on addressing some security issues and bug fixes, reportedly over 300 for eZ Publish 4.0.1 alone.

eZ Publish is a solid, well-regarded platform with a substantial user community, and is certainly worth a look for organizations considering an open source content management system. And 2.5 million downloads is pretty convincing, too.