Shareware / Free Software Developer:

Winner: SouthSoft, Inc.

It's been a battle to reach the top, but they finally did it. After two long years of being #2, SouthSoft gets voted into the Winner's spot this year by a slim majority behind our Runner-Up, OS/2 Netlabs and Peter Nielsen. SouthSoft has been famous for years for PMMail, a stellar e-mail client. Recently they also diversified into newsreaders with the release of PMINews, marketed in partnership with Stardock Systems, Inc.

1997 Winner: Knightware Software Company

1996 Winner: Knightware Software Company

Runner-Up: Ulrich Möller

It was quite a surprise to see Ulrich win Runner-Up position in our Shareware / Free Software developer category, but it probably had a lot to do with XFolder, the Workplace Shell enhancement utility that puts many important and useful new features at your disposal. Late last year, Ulrich released the source code for XFolder under the GNU public license, giving hundreds of programmers everywhere the opportunity to see how a WPS utility works and improve it with feature suggestions and bug fixes.

1997 Runner-Up: SouthSoft

1996 Runner-Up: SouthSoft

Commercial Software Developer:

Winner: Stardock Systems, Inc.

Galactic Civilizations. Object Desktop. Entrepreneur. These and other entertainment and utility releases put Stardock Systems on the map as a major OS/2 developer. Releasing more commercial software titles for OS/2 in 1998 than any other vendor, Stardock has kept its faith in OS/2, and in return the OS/2 community has put them in the Winner's position once more with twice as many votes as the Runner-Up.

1997 Winner: Stardock Systems.

1996 Winner: Stardock Systems

Runner-Up: Star Division

Go on, you can say it, it was the office suite, right? Everybody got an early Christmas gift from Star Division last year when they released their rich and mature StarOffice free for personal and non-profit use. With word processor, spreadsheet, sophisticated graphics, database, and heavy internet integration, StarOffice flew off the proverbial shelves (or FTP sites to be exact). In thanks, readers added their votes for Star Division, pushing it high enough to get Runner-Up status.

1997 Runner-Up: Star Division

1996 Runner-Up: Lotus Development Corp. / IBM