The KVRaudio "Developer Challenge 09" is a competition for non-professional VSTi/VST coders. All the competition entries are freeware, and the entries for the 2009 competition have just been posted online. I downloaded and played with most of the entries yesterday, and I was really surprised by the quality of some of them. If you use computers in your music setup then you must have a look: http://www.kvraudio.com/developer_challenge_2009.php.
Members of the KVR community get to vote on the entries, and the winners receive money and/or prizes, all donated by the community. Donation is via Paypal if you want to add to the prizefund, but you don't have to. You can just enjoy some of the outstanding free software these kind people have produced for the competition. I was particularly impressed with "_02.Circles" and the convolution reverb plugin, but many others look interesting and useful too. KVRaudio is also a huge resource for freeare plugins (it has a database with download links and reviews) and for synth patches.
