Evangelist of the Year [FOSS Awards 2026]

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Voting for FOSS Awards ends on September 7th, 2026. Voting is invite only, please go through this post for more information on who can vote (and how).

Evangelist of the year

This award recognises people who have gone above and beyond to champion the cause of digital commons in India through writing, speaking, community-building, advocacy, and other activities. Their work has helped bring more people into the digital commons ecosystem.

Choose your pick
  • Ram Iyengar
  • Hussain Nagaria
  • Hari Prasanth
  • Mohit P Tahiliani
  • contrapunctus
0 voters

The endorsements the above candidates received have been added as replies to this thread. If you’re a nominee, you’re welcome to post a brief endorsement below. Tell the community about your work in 2025-2026. Replies on this thread are reserved for nominees only.

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Endorsements and Nominations

Ram Iyengar

  • Ram has been an active volunteer in the FOSS United ecosystem for almost two years now, helping us draft the Governing Board charter, run the elections, and establish the Board. He also supported IndiaFOSS 2025 by bringing OpenSSF to sponsor the event. But his evangelism reaches far beyond the FOSS United ecosystem. Ram is a vocal proponent of FOSS in the Cloud ecosystem, while also taking a critical lens to the excesses of the Cloud ecosystem, specifically the Kubernetes ecosystem. We regularly see him whizzing around to various events across the world, and he always makes it a point to connect the dots. For instance, he introduced us to a large part of the OSPO ecosystem at Linux Foundation events in India.

  • Ram has been active in the FOSS United community for over 3 years now, and has given tens of talks at FOSS United events. He has helped us find sponsors for events and brainstorm several programs, introduced us to people/projects/communities. Through his work at the OpenSSF foundation, he has helped shape conversations around security in open source in several forums across India and the world. He is a known face in the Kubernetes and Cloud native ecosystems, but the breadth of his evangelism spreads across domains.

  • I still remember my very first KubeCon talk: I was terrified, but Ram made a point to come all the way to cheer me on. Having him in the audience felt like having a friend in my corner, turning my nerves into confidence. That’s just who he is. Ram is the definition of what an open-source evangelist should be not just because of his visibility on major stages, but because of how he treats the people behind the code. Through his roles as Chief Evangelist at Cloud Foundry Foundation and his work with OpenSSF across the APAC region, Ram has spent years advocating for open-source adoption, cloud-native tech, and software security. He is a fixture at global and local events like KubeCon and Open Source Summit, but his real impact happens off-stage. What truly sets Ram apart is his intentional effort to mentor, encourage, and uplift early-career contributors, students, and first-time speakers (me included!). Open source can be intimidating for newcomers, but Ram consistently makes time to offer guidance, validate their efforts, and celebrate their growth publicly. He has an incredible ability to make young developers like me feel seen, supported, and capable of making meaningful contributions to the community. Open-source ecosystems only survive when people feel welcome and valued. Ram doesn’t just promote open-source software, he builds the supportive, empathetic community culture that keeps people coming back. Recognizing him as Evangelist of the Year would honor someone who truly embodies the spirit of open source in India and beyond.

Hussain Nagaria

  • Hussain is most popularly known for his Frappe/ERPnext tutorials (BuildWithHussain on YT), but he has taken the scope of this work far beyond the Frappe ecosystem - organising FOSS builder series, participating (and winnning several times) in FOSSHack, and most recently starting a very ambitious project - https://cs17.org/
    Teaching FOSS to young women in a tier-i’m-not-so-sure is a challenge for the brave, and that he is. Can’t wait to see this shape up!

Hari Prasanth (aka nammahari)

Mohit P Tahiliani

  • Prof Mohit has been an active FOSS United volunteer for almost two years now, and kickstarted the FOSS United Mangalore chapter, sustained it for 2 years, and then handed it away to good hands (which is arguably the hardest part). But his work in FOSS goes far beyond FOSS United.
    He is a networking geek, and an academic at heart. He has integrated Open Source work in academic curriculum, created a methodology for multi-year projects for students, set up a FOSS centre at his campus, helped tens of students through programs like GSOC and LFX (and is himself a mentor for some of these programs), started FOSS projects within the campus ensuring they don’t depend on proprietary tech and students get to work on these systems, and so much more. Did I mention they organised what is the largest FOSS United conference outside of IndiaFOSS!

  • Few people in the Indian FOSS ecosystem are able to juggle academia, volunteering, and industry engagement and Prof. Mohit is one of only a handful that is able to do so.

contrapunctus

  • FOSS work is not restricted to code, and contrapunctus’ work is a great example of that. She has been making OSM contributions for many years now and is one of the most active mappers in the country. Her work on mapping public toilets in Delhi, amongst many other useful projects, is a good example of identifying the right problem to solve and then investing significant effort in it!