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).
FOSS United Community volunteer of the year
This award celebrates people who have made a meaningful, sustained contribution to the FOSS United community - organising events, running local chapters, helping out with our programs and simply showing up when they’re needed the most. This is for the people who do the unglamorous work that keeps communities alive.
Choose your pick
Hari Prasanth (aka nammahari)
Arun P
Harsh Patel
Mohit P Tahiliani
Venkatesh C
James Reilly
0voters
Please note that Arun P has withdrawn his nomination. Votes casted for Arun will not be counted in the final result.
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.
I’ve known Hari for the last four years, and in all that time I’ve seen how much he’s done for the open source community, especially across Chennai and Tamil Nadu. to me, he’s one of the people who truly brought the idea of FOSS into our circle and made it approachable for students and developers who had never explored it before.
More than being an open source contributor, Hari has always been focused on growing the community. He’s conducted workshops in colleges, spoken at meetups, mentored students, and encouraged so many people to make their first open source contribution. What stands out the most is that he doesn’t just think about writing code; he thinks about how to build a stronger ecosystem that helps more people get involved.
I still remember attending my first meetup in Chennai back in 2022, the FOSS United × GDG Chennai meetup. That was where I first met Hari, and it left a huge impression on me. Seeing the way he spoke about FOSS and the energy he brought to the community genuinely inspired me, and I know I’m not the only one who feels that way.
His impact goes far beyond Chennai. he’s traveled to places like Bengaluru, Coimbatore, Vellore, Madurai, Pune, Bihar, and many other cities to speak at events, run workshops, and help grow local communities. Wherever he goes, he brings people together and gets them excited about open source. To me, Hari has become the face of FOSS United in Chennai. His passion, consistency, and long-term vision for the open source ecosystem have inspired a lot of people, including me. I genuinely believe he deserves this recognition.
Harsh Patel
There are a lot of people that do the silent work behind running a community or maintaining a project. Harsh is one of those faces that shows up, fades into the background but is always around if you need something - be it tech help or just picking up water cans because we forgot our vendor to do that for us. Harsh has been volunteering with us for over 3 years now. He’s one of those people you can always rely on and know will show up.
Venkatesh Chaturvedi
The FOSS United Lucknow chapter has been one of most active ones in the recent years, and Venkatesh deserves a lot of credit for this. Running community meetups while having a job is hard, and its harder when there are not enough venues, speakers, volunteers and even participants, but the team’s enthusiasm is contagious!
Starting a community from scratch is not an easy task and Venkatesh + James pulled off bringing together a community in one of the most unlikeliest of cities
Mohit P Tahiliani
Juggling a job, a family, and volunteering is hard enough - so we were surprised when we saw what Prof. Mohit was able to pull off at MangaloreFOSS in January of 2026. In addition to everything else, not only was he juggling students and working with the industry, he had also been central in organizing the largest cityFOSS event in their debut year!
Prof. Mohit has been advocating for FOSS in Academia for more than a decade now, and students from his lab regularly contribute to the Linux Kernel Networking stack and present at international conferences. Apart from his academic and institute responsibilities, he decided to start the Mangalore chapter, and kept it going without much help from the FOSS United Foundation team for almost two years - and then he pulled off a successful MangaloreFOSS. And he set a great example for the rest of the FOSS ecosystem by stepping down from the lead organizer/volunteer role for FOSS United Mangalore at MangaloreFOSS, passing on the torch to one of the active volunteers.
His efforts at NITK, COSH, and FOSS United Mangalore set an example for what can be achieved within academia when skills, intent, and resources come together.
After establishing a city community and organizing a cityFOSS conference, it takes a great level of maturity to walk away and hand over the reigns to a younger volunteer.
James has been an active organizer of FOSS United Lucknow, and has been volunteering to help out with FOSS United events across the country, specifically IndiaFOSS. After stepping up last year at IndiaFOSS 2025, he returned as a co-chair again this year to help make the festival vibrant and a success. He is one of the few people who volunteer actively at the local and national levels.
In addition to establishing the Lucknow city chapter, James went above and beyond for IndiaFOSS 2025 and continues to do so for IndiaFOSS 2026.