Packt Announces '08 Open Source CMS Awards Finalists
Packt Publishing has announced the finalists for each category of its 2008 Open Source CMS Awards. Last year, Drupal was the overall winner, pushing the ’06 overall winner, Joomla!, to the second place. This year, both are finalists in two categories. But there are many other contenders that may change the final results.Open source CMS voting and the best-of-breed selection has become quite popular lately. Packt Awards is in its third year of selecting winners and awarding prize money to the open source CMS leaders. Packt’s selection is based on a combination of public voting and judges’ contributions. Public voting for the winners in each of the five categories is open from September 1 to October 20, 2008.The public votes will then be combined with those casted by the panel of judges. Of course we would be in big trouble with the boss if we didn't tell you that our own Brice Dunwoodie, Publisher and Chief Editor of CMSWire, is one of the judges for this year's Most Promising Open Source CMS Award.The panel of judges will then make the final decision on top three CMS in each category:

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 A new category for 2008 is the Open Source CMS MVP Award, which will recognize the contributions to open source CMS made by specific individuals. The Packt Open Source CMS Award is designed to encourage, support, recognize and reward open source CMS selected by a panel of judges and users. In its third year, the Award continues to offer prize money of US$ 5,000 for the overall winner and US$ 2,000 for the winners of the remaining categories. This initiative further supports Packt’s dedication to open source. Earlier this year, Packt Publishing donated over US$ 100k to open source projects. The company’s open source philanthropy started in 2004, when it started supporting the phpMyAdmin project.Packt is scheduled to announce the overall winner on October 31, 2008. To cast a vote on your favorite Open Source CMS, visit Packt. Let us know, too, what you think about this year’s selection of open source CMS finalists.