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+title: Monitoring Plugins Wins BlueHats Prize
+author: Holger Weiß
+date: 2024-12-30
+---
+
+As [announced](https://nlnet.nl/bluehatsprize/2024/4.html) by the NLnet
+Foundation, the Monitoring Plugins team is the winner of the fourth 2024
+BlueHats prize!<end-of-teaser>
+
+[BlueHats][bluehats] prizes are an initiative by the French Interministerial
+Digital Directorate.  They are awarded to maintainers of critical free and open
+source projects.  In 2024, four prizes of € 10,000 each have been given out.
+
+The jury, made up of public officials from [ANSSI][anssi] and [DINUM][dinum],
+recognised the central role of Monitoring Plugins in the running of Internet
+services.  Monitoring Plugins is critical infrastructure that is widely used and
+relies on a small group of contributors.  The interface is simple, but the tasks
+that the plugins perform can be hard to perform and has to be efficient.  Since
+so many systems run these programs often, they need to be reliable and safe.
+
+A representative of DINUM says:
+
+> We know for sure that many public administrations depend indirectly on Monitoring Plugins: this project is typical of a niche Free Software initiative that helps other tools to remain accurate, here in the monitoring area.  We hope that this award will help the maintainers to get more sponsors and direct contributions!
+
+The Monitoring Plugins team is honored by the recognition by the jury.  As a
+small corner stone of many IT monitoring solutions, we are seldom as visible as
+big name projects, but are happy to contribute our part to support the
+infrastructure all of us rely on in our society.  Especially as infrastructure
+is often boring (as it should be), it is not often visible and usually only
+receives attention when it fails.  In this spirit we are particulary thankful
+for people and institutions who care about the small and boring little cogs of
+the big machinery.  This is not self-evident and we appreciate the effort and
+hope to continue to provide reliable software to the world.
+
+[bluehats]: https://code.gouv.fr/en/bluehats/
+[anssi]: https://cyber.gouv.fr/en
+[dinum]: https://www.numerique.gouv.fr/dinum/
+
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