Linux Foundation Opens Registration for Annual Collaboration Summit, Posts Call for Participation for LinuxCon 2009

Community members prepare for the year?s most anticipated Linux-focused events

SAN FRANCISCO, January 27, 2009 ? The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that registration is open for the Linux Foundation?s Annual Collaboration Summit taking place April 8 ? 10, 2009 in San Francisco. Also available today are further details, including the Call for Proposals (CFP), for both the Annual Collaboration Summit and LinuxCon 2009.

For the first time, the Linux Foundation is inviting all members of the Linux and open source software communities to submit a proposal for its Annual Collaboration Summit, its cornerstone event. Summit CFP submissions are due February 15, 2009. LinuxCon submissions will be due April 15, 2009.

Sponsored by Intel Corporation and returning to San Francisco in 2009, the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit is an exclusive, invitation-only gathering of the brightest minds in Linux, including core kernel developers, distribution maintainers, ISVs, end users, system vendors and other community organizations. It is the only conference designed to accelerate collaboration and encourage solutions by bringing together a true cross-section of leaders to meet face-to-face to tackle and solve the most pressing issues facing Linux today.

A large portion of the program this year will be dedicated to desktop developers focused on Mobile Linux. Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), mobile phones, Netbooks, and In-Vehicle Infotainment are expected to populate the world as the economy puts new pressures on companies and consumers, and as competition in the PC industry continues to cross new boundaries in innovation. The Linux community, including developers, vendors and ISVs, will use the Summit to advance the Linux operating system for its role in this global movement. The Moblin Project, for example, will host The Moblin Summit onsite to gather leading vendors and developers together to collaborate with other members of the open source community.

Another focus for the event will be High Performance Computing, where critical workload requirements will be debated among community members. Other tracks include the Systems Management Summit and the ISV Summit, where software vendors can come together in one place with every major Linux ?distro? to discuss application portability and other key opportunities in the year ahead.

The Annual Collaboration Summit, presented by host-sponsor Intel
Corporation, will be co-located with the CELF Embedded Linux Conference and the Linux Storage and Filesystem Workshop. The winner of the ?We?re Linux? video contest (http://video.linuxfoundation.org) will also be revealed at the Summit, where the winning video and honorable mentions will be screened for the event?s attendees.

Please visit the Linux Foundation?s Annual Collaboration Summit site for more information.

?Linux Foundation?s events provide the only vendor-neutral forum for the Linux community to collaborate face-to-face,? said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. ?This year?s event lineup, including the Annual Collaboration Summit and LinuxCon, are critical for advancing the operating system and providing vendors, developers and users with the right tools for their day-to-day work.?

LinuxCon 2009
LinuxCon, which takes place September 21 ? 25, 2009, is a new annual technical conference that is being produced in the spirit of open source development ? for the community by the community. The program committee includes recognized community members, including:

? Joe Brockmeier, Novell
? Matt Domsch, Dell
? Bdale Garbee, HP
? Dirk Hohndel, Intel
? Gerrit Huizenga, IBM
? Ari Jaaksi, Nokia
? Vinod Kutty, CME Group
? Amanda McPherson, The Linux Foundation
? Craig Ross, The Linux Foundation
? David Schlesinger, ACCESS
? Tsugikazu Shibata, NEC
? Elena Zannoni, Oracle

To get additional details, please visit the LinuxCon 2009 site.

Linux Foundation events provide kernel developers, IT professionals, end users, senior executives, industry experts, students and the media with a vendor-neutral, nonprofit forum in which collaboration and education advance knowledge and accelerate the advancement of Linux. The events provide a platform for new Linux and open source developments to be revealed and discussed.

About the Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the...

As a blogger myself I can appreciate a catchy headline as much as the next guy, but this one is insane. ZDNet?s Robin Harris is declaring an early victory in the netbook market with his story, ?Windows Kicks Linux to the Curb.?

In the article he indicates that Microsoft has 80% share in the netbook market therefore a Windows win. ?Last July Linux had a huge opportunity to beat Windows in the red-hot netbook market (see Linux for housewives. XP for geeks. ) But faster than I?d expected Microsoft has kicked Linux to the curb, claiming an 80% attach rate for netbooks.?

The author is forgetting two critical facts: first Microsoft formerly held well over 90% of the desktop market, second Linux is free and netbooks are exacting huge pain on Microsoft?s margins which they openly admitted as one of the reasons for laying off 5000 employees stating, ?Client revenue declined 8% as a result of PC market weakness and a continued shift to lower priced netbooks.?

To quote the CEO of Toyota (who just become the worlds largest automaker beating GM for global share for the first time in 77 years), “The decline [in sales] that we are experiencing is pretty dramatic. And share doesn’t always pay the bills.”

In the same day the ZDNet article ran there were two contradictory stories in Businessweek and the New York Times. Businessweek covered Intel’s push into the Netbook and Mobile Internet device market with Linux and the New York Times talked about how “$200 Laptops Break a Business Model.” You can guess what model they were talking about.

It is a shame that people are being laid off in these troubled times and certainly no one is immune to economic woes, but who is really kicking whom to the curb?

I know penguins live at the South Pole, but having visited the Soviet Union back in January 1987 when the air temperature was -60° C, you will always have a hard time convincing me that penguins wouldn’t love parts of the Northern polar regions.

A lot of things have changed since my college visit in the late Eighties. Leningrad is St. Petersburg, the Soviet Union is now the Russian Federation, though Moscow is still Moscow, and Russian winters are still very cold.

Chilly temps aside, the climate may be becoming more friendly to the Linux penguin. According to the Russian tech news site CNews (original Russian), the Russian IT community is lobbying President Dmitry Medvedev to get behind the development of a state-sponsored Russian distribution of Linux. Such a development would be part of a shift away from Microsoft Windows and towards a more general open source, Linux-based platform.

This plan differs from other state-sponsored distributions, such as China’s Red Flag Linux, in that the proposed Russian distro would actually be designated the national operating system for the Russian Federation.

Naturally, commercial Russian distro maker ALT Linux is tickled, er,  pink about the idea. Microsoft Russia, also naturally, is less than enthused, questioning the need for a national OS at all.

We’ve been down this road before; while seeing Linux supplant other operating systems on government machines is really good news, there are still some that believe that it’s an anathema to the very idea of choice Linux is supposed to represent. I tend to disagree: after all, someone chose to put Windows on all of those Russian machines, so what’s wrong with choosing something else?

Linux Foundation Announces Formal Kick Off for ?We?re Linux? Video Contest

User-generated video campaign taps grassroots community talent to elevate strengths of Linux

SAN FRANCISCO, January 26, 2009 ? The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced the formal launch of its ?We?re Linux? video contest. The contest seeks to find the best user-generated videos that demonstrate what Linux means to those who use it and inspire others to try it. The contest is open to everyone.

The ?We?re Linux? contest officially begins today and will be open for submissions through midnight on March 15, 2009. The winner(s) will be revealed at the Linux Foundation?s Collaboration Summit on April 8, 2009, in San Francisco and will be awarded with a trip to Tokyo, Japan to participate in the Linux Foundation?s Japanese Linux Symposium.

In response to early and resounding community input, the campaign has been renamed from the original ?I?m Linux? to the ?We?re Linux? video contest. This name embodies the essence of community and better expresses how Linux is represented by more than any one person or company.

The winner will be determined by a combination of online rankings and a panel of judges that includes:

? Matt Asay, CNET blogger and executive at Alfresco, Inc.;
? Larry Augustin, venture capitalist and former chairman of VA Software,
and Linux Foundation board member;
? Jono Bacon, Ubuntu community manager;
? Joe Brockmeier, openSUSE community manager;
? Melinda Mettler, director, School of Advertising at the Academy of Art
University; and
? Tim O?Reilly, founder and CEO, O?Reilly Media, Inc.

To become a member of the Linux Foundation?s Video forum, view early submissions, and to submit your own video for the ?We?re Linux? contest, please visit the LF Video Forum.

?While Microsoft spent large sums of money on advertising last year to attempt to reinvent itself, and Apple continued to use well executed yet traditional techniques for advertising its alternative, Linux will be best represented by using the same kind of collaborative model used to develop the operating system,? said Amanda McPherson, vice president of marketing and developer programs at the Linux Foundation.

About the Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux. Founded in 2007, The Linux Foundation sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and is supported by leading Linux and open source companies and developers from around the world. The Linux Foundation promotes, protects and standardizes Linux by providing unified resources and services needed for open source to successfully compete with closed platforms. For more information, please visit www.linux-foundation.org.

###

Trademarks: The Linux Foundation and Linux Standard Base are trademarks of The Linux Foundation. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. Third party marks and brands are the property of their respective holders.

Contests, at their best, can highlight creative thinking and originality.  In the Linux community, there seems to be an serious overabundance of both.  Four different contests — all starting this January — are doing their best to crowdsource and give out significant prizes to the winners.  Vote, participate, or just soak it all in, these contests are great ways to get involved.  

For one — the Linux New Media Awards — I’m a judge and would love to have your input.  See the categories below and if you have suggestions on who I should vote for, please email me at amanda (at) linux-foundation (dot) org.

The four contests all involve creativity, judges, and significant prizes including a trip to France for one, and a trip to Japan for another.  So, whether you look at these contests as a chance to show off your video skills, go after real prize money, or just a fun way to participate in the big, online discussion that is Linux, there’s room for all.

So, don’t sit on the sidelines.  Get involved.  Let the contests begin.

*** “Think Inside the Box” Contest

Cisco’s Application eXtension Platform (AXP) developer contest, termed the “Think Inside the Box” contest, is offering Linux developers $100,000 in cash prizes.  The AXP is a Linux blade server running Linux kernel 2.6 and is compatible with Fedora Linux.  The skills and knowledge of Linux development used in the contest are the same skills used in general Linux application development on servers.  Brian Proffitt of the Linux Developer Network blogged <a href=”http://ldn.linuxfoundation.org/article/cisco-developer-contest-brodges-gap-between-networking-development“>about the details</a> and reasoning behind this contest being sponsored by Cisco.  Here’s the <a href=”http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/routers/ps9701/white_paper_c11_459082.html“>Cisco Application eXtension Platform Overview</a>. And <a href=”http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9701/products_data_sheets_list.html“>here’s a number of examples</a> of how Linux can be used to run server applications from inside of the Cisco Integrated Services Router (ISR).  There are over 5 million Cisco ISRs currently deployed.  All of these routers can accept the Cisco AXP Linux blade server.

More information can be found on the Cisco Innovation blog <a href=”http://blogs.cisco.com/innovation“>here</a>.

*** The “I’m Linux” Video Contest

The idea is simple.  Create a video that explains why Linux is great.  You can parody the “I’m a PC, I’m a Mac” ads, you can go serious, you can go crazy.  It’s up to you.  The contest opens January 26 and will close at midnight Pacific Time on March 15, 2009.  It’s judged by a panel of open source and advertising professionals.  Judging criteria will be based on originality, clarity of message, and how much it inspires others to use Linux.  The judges will also take into account community votes on The Linux Foundation video site such as number of favourites and starred voting.  The winning video will be unveiled at The Linux Foundation’s Collaboration Summit in San Francisco on April 8, 2009.  The winner will receive a free trip to Tokyo, Japan, to participate in The Linux Foundation Japan Linux Symposium in October 2009. There are already some very cool entries. 

Contest rules and guidelines are available here:  http://video.linuxfoundation.org/category/video-category/-linux-foundation-video-contest

*** Linux New Media Awards

The Linux New Media Awards recognize the most significant products, projects, people, and organizations related to Linux during the calendar year, 2008.  Instead of trying to cover all...

Well, I'd have to say that for January, these past few days have certainly been chock full o' Linux news. And not just any news: a big Linux conference, a significant licensing shift for a big-name Linux library, layoffs in Redmond, and--perhaps most earth-shattering of all--Bdale Garbee got his beard shaved off for charity.

read more