[2] Peter Harrison then suggested that a national organisation be formed to promote and advocate use of open-source software, via the New Zealand Linux Users Group.

[3] This led to several meetings throughout New Zealand in 2002 and 2003, and finally resulted in the NZOSS being formed as a formal incorporated society on 27 February 2003.

Since this time the NZOSS has been involved with various efforts to promote open source in government, including participation with the Ministry of Economic Development's Authentication Project, and later a report on the State Services Commission guidelines on the legal issues of open-source software.

A number of central, regional and local government agencies worked together with the society to run trials using free software for common desktop tasks.

The Awards help to raise awareness of the open-source advantage for New Zealand by telling some powerful success stories based on real achievements.