The Open Science Free Software Award rewards projects and teams working to develop and disseminate open source software – a common good of prime importance for scientific knowledge.

These awards were part of the Second National Plan for Open Science and are given by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research. There are several categories that showcase projects according to their scientific and technical dimensions, their capacity to train and lead a community and the quality of their documentation:

• The Open Science Free Software Award – scientific and technical category rewards the scientific and technical qualities of software.
• The Open Science Free Software Award – community category highlights the construction of an active community of contributors and users.
• The Open Science Free Software Award – documentation category recognises the efforts required to provide documentation that facilitates the use and appropriation of software.

The jury’s special award is given to an exemplary project which combines technical components, leading a community and documentation.