Wearing a suit when the rest of the 500-strong lecture theatre were dressed in shorts, jandals, and old conference T Shirts, Bruce Perens introduced himself by announcing his clothes as a lesson: Linux needs to be more outward facing. Perens is described as an open source luminary, the founder of a number of non-profits, groups and Open Source initiatives and projects including the well-renowned and globally used Busybox. A former Debian Project Leader, he represented Open Source at the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society in 2005. Perens is often quoted in the press, advocating for open source and the reform of national and international technology policy.
Monetizing open source software can be a tricky challenge for many companies. After all, when you're giving away your primary product for free, how could you possibly make money off it? Nicolas Erdody, Paul Gampe, Mark Bathie, and Bob Waldie formed a panel in the Business of Open Source MiniConf at Linux.conf.au 2012 and talked about the various ways companies can hope to monetize Open Source software.
Last night I arrived in Ballarat after catching a train from the bustling city of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. Ballarat is the small town venue for Linux.conf.au 2012, the largest annual Linux conference in the southern hemisphere.
The organizers behind Linux.conf.au 2012 - which is hosted in Ballarat, Australia in January next year - have announced the second keynote speaker as Bruce Perens. Perens released his first Free Software program, Electric Fence, in 1987. He is also creator of Busybox, which has spawned its own development community and is part of many consumer devices.
It's that time of year again. It didn't feel like long since I was reporting on Linux Conference Australia 2011 way back in January this year, where we interviewed the founder of Linux Linus Torvalds, an early Canonical employee and GNOME release manager Jeff Waugh, and covered everything from Linux-powered robots to liveblogging Google's Vice President Vint Cerf's opening keynote. Linux.conf.au is back again next year, hosted in Ballarat (just outside Melbourne, Australia) and once again at least one representative from OMG! Ubuntu! will make the trip to report on a weeks' worth of exciting Linux news, showcasing and project launches. Make the jump for more information, and detail on the first keynote speaker - GNOME's Executive Director Karen Sandler.
Linus Torvalds has probably done more for the world than many know, and his influence stretches far and wide throughout all corners of the globe with a variety of amazing implementations of his original vision that started almost two decades ago. Whether you know it or not, at some stage in your day-to-day life you probably come into contact with Torvalds' work. Without him, many wouldn't be where they are today, Ubuntu wouldn't exist and Free Software wouldn't be such a prevalent mainstream ideology used by millions. I caught up with Linus for a chat in Brisbane to get his opinion on Ubuntu, Linux in the mobile space and find out what new stuff is happening in the kernel this year.
The location for Linux.conf.au 2012 has been announced as Ballarat, Victoria. The conference will run early next year and have a similar format to the LCAs we have become used to over the past ten years - a week long Open Source conference boasting a variety of keynote speakers, talks, tutorials and sessions that makes LCA what it is.
Days three and four of LCA2011 have passed, and now we are almost halfway through the fifth day, Friday. The past couple of days have been quite interesting, with many very cool talks, two social events in the evenings and I got lucky enough to spend some time with Linus Torvalds!
Yesterday I got a chance to sit down for an interview over lunch with one of the original founders of Ubuntu: ex-GNOME Release Manager and past Canonical employee Jeff Waugh.
Day two of Linux.conf.au has been and gone, with highlights for me being Vint Cerf's keynote, the RoboCup talk and a 40 minute interview with Jeff Waugh over lunch. Click through for day two's gallery of photos from LCA2011.
I'm currently sitting in a very interesting and unique talk about the University of New South Wales and their Computer Science RoboCup team. Robocup, which you may have heard of, is an international competition where teams build and program fully autonomous robots to play a game of soccer.
Google's Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist Vinton Cerf is about to take the stage at Linux.conf.au to deliver the conference's primary keynote.