More than 10 years ago, I made a website called UCACA [Under Construction And Collecting Awards]. It collected about 17 awards. It was eligible for one award because it had already had two other awards. One fellow noted that the site met all of his criteria for an award (originality, fast access, good design). However, he didn't give me the award on the basis that it would make a mockery of his award. Others were far less discriminating.
A thread in the WatchGuard article, which I didn't see in the original, starts in the 1st line: "...highlights the risky side of relying on freeware and shareware for any mission-critical purpose."
I would attribute the risk more to a lack of knowledge and experience with ones software than the free-ness or non-free-ness.
The article says that he "had a third party submit his file to just about every software aggregation site", it would be handy to know how many that was, so that we can divide 16 by it.
"According to the report I received 2 weeks after submissions began “awardmestars” is now listed on 218 sites, pending on 394 sites and has been rejected by 421 sites. Approximately 7% of the sites that listed the software emailed me that it had won an award (I don’t know how many have displayed it with an award, without informing me). With 394 pending sites it might win quite a few more awards yet."
"Addendum 2 -- 23 awards ‘won’ at the latest count."
August 2007. How lovely of Watchguard to repackage the article, stamp its own copyright and publish it as "news".