Accepting nominations since mid-July, Packt Publishing announced this week the finalists for its 2008 Open Source CMS Awards. Final voting began on Sept. 1 and runs through Oct. 20.This is the third year for the awards, which are designed to "encourage, support, recognize, and reward" popularity and quality in open source content management systems. The finalists for each of the four main categories are as follows:

Overall Open Source CMS Award Finalists

DotNetNuke Drupal Joomla Plone TYPOlight

Most Promising Open Source CMS Finalists

CMS Made Simple ImpressCMS MiaCMS MemHT SilverStripe

Best PHP Open Source CMS Finalists

CMS Made Simple Drupal eZ Publish Joomla Xoops

Best Other Open Source CMS Finalists

dotCMS DotNetNuke mojoPortal Plone Umbraco

I'm happy to see that there are some new faces alongside the familiar names in the list of finalists. It speaks to the vibrance and dedication of the open source content management system community that there are so many good choices, and I look forward to learning more about some of the lesser-known projects.

In addition to awards for the systems themselves, an Open Source CMS MVP Award will be given to an outstanding individual contributor. The winners in each category will be determined by a panel of four judges whose votes will be combined with those from the public. Announcements of the winners will be staggered:

Oct. 27: Open Source CMS MVP Oct. 28: Best Other (non-PHP based) Open Source CMS Oct. 29: Best PHP Open Source CMS Oct. 30: Most Promising Open Source CMS Oct. 31: Overall Open Source CMS Award

The project team for the overall winner gets a prize of $5,000, with an additional $15,000 in prizes going to winners and runners-up other categories.

To learn more about each of the projects and cast your vote, visit Packt Publishing's finalist page.