Sun Microsystems, the US networking giant which maintains a major operation in West Lothian, is sponsoring Scotland's first open source computing awards.
The awards are designed to take advantage of Scottish computing expertise in open source operating systems, to extend that expertise in the commercial arena and thus bolster the Scottish information technology sector.
Open source, which is by definition more collaborative than proprietary, is based on free access to software source code.
Industry observers say that its push in Scotland also challenges the dominance of Microsoft and proprietary-based software companies which do not allow access to source code.
At the same time, the companies involved in the Scottish Open Source Awards have already opened a dialogue with the Scottish Executive regarding the way software is purchased by government.
Greg Soper, managing director of SalesAgility, a Scottish open source customer relationship management company, said: "Software tenders are often expressed in ways which no supplier of Scottish software can meet, because of the expectation that the only options are large foreign firms.
"Open Source is good for the economy. It is more robust and more secure, and service revenue tends to be local rather than be repatriated to the coffers of the software giants of the US."
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