The European Open Source Academy (EOSA) has awarded Greg Kroah-Hartman the 2026 Excellence in Open Source Award, presented by the European community for outstanding contributions to open source development. Greg is responsible for maintaining the stable and staging branches of the kernel. Linux, is the maintainer of 16 kernel subsystems, including USB, TTY, and Driver core, and is the creator of openSUSE Tumbleweed, udev, and the driver development initiative for Linux (Linux Driver project). In recent years, Greg has lived in the Netherlands.
In addition to the main prize, 4 special awards (Special Recognitions) were established, awarded to 5 participants:
- Business and Impact - Frank Karlitschek, creator of the NextCloud cloud platform.
- Community Impact - Roberto Di Cosmo, Italian computer scientist and creator of the Software Heritage source code archive.
- Community Impact - Stefano Zacchiroli, French researcher and professor, co-founder and scientific director of the Software Heritage archive, and three-time project leader Debian and served on the board of directors of the Open Source Initiative (OSI).
- Skills and Education - Matthew Venn, founder of the TinyTapeout project, which helps with the fabrication of open-source chips.
- Advocacy and Awareness - Jenny Molloy, Group Leader at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), founder of the Reagent Collaboration Network, co-author of the Open Material Transfer Agreement, co-founder of the Open Science Hardware Foundation, and advocate for open science.
