Fri, 11 Jan 2008
An article by Sam Varghese appeared on ITwire today, entitled linux.conf.au: What is Novell doing here?:
A GNU/Linux system does not normally load modules that are not released under an approved licence. So why should Australia’s national Linux conference take on board a sponsor who engages in practices that are at odds with the community?
What am I talking about? A company which should not be in the picture has poked its nose in as a sponsor. Novell, which indicated the level of its commitment to FOSS by signing a deal with Microsoft in November 2006, will be one of the supporting sponsors for the conference.
Novell was also a minor sponsor of the 2007 conference, and Sam wrote an article in January expressing similar thoughts, which included this quote from Bruce Perens:
“I’d rather they hadn’t accepted a Novell sponsorship. It wasn’t very clueful of them, given Novell’s recent collaboration with Microsoft in spreading fear and doubt about Linux and software patents,” Perens said.
Ultimately, I think that’s a mistaken view. Linux.conf.au is what it is thanks to the contributions of four groups:
- the organisers
- who create the conference, get a venue, organise a schedule of events, help the speakers and attendees to get there, and generally make it easy for everyone to just get immersed in cool Linux stuff
- the speakers
- who provide the core of the schedule, the reason for attendees to go, and a core depth of awesome technical knowledge and ideas
- the attendees
- who fill in the organisational/content gaps that the organisers and speakers miss, who make for fascinating corridor and dinner conversations, who make side events like the miniconfs, the hackfest or open day interesting, and who pay the rego fees that lets the conference happen
- the sponsors
- who provide a chunk of money to fill out the conference budget letting us commit to venues and events earlier (when we might otherwise have to wait to see how many people come), and let us do extra things that registration fees alone wouldn’t cover
Obviously sometimes you have to exclude people from participating, but that’s mostly only if they’re actually causing trouble for the event. For sponsors, that pretty much means trying to interfere in the conference itself, or not paying on time. Otherwise, if you’re contributing to the conference, and not causing problems, you certainly should be recognised for that, as far as I can see.
For me, the same thing would apply if Microsoft was offering to sponsor the conference – if they’re willing to contribute, and not cause problems, I’m all for it. If they happen to not be doing anything constructive in Linux-space anywhere else, well, it seems perfectly fine to me to start contributing by helping make linux.conf.au awesome.
In Microsoft’s case that would be hard, because all the people going “oh my gosh, Microsoft, Linux! Wolves, sheeps! Hell, snow!” along with possible mixed messages from Microsoft and our long-term major sponsors HP and IBM about the future of Linux and whatnot could really distract us from all the cool technical stuff the conference is fundamentally about. I don’t think there’s anything Microsoft could offer to justify that much disruption, but having more of the world’s software companies involved in free software would probably be worth a bit of hassle, if the disruption could be minimised.
Ultimately, I guess my disagreement comes down to these couple of comments from Sam’s article:
Asked whether it was right that Novell should be allowed to be a sponsor for a conference such as this - which, in my view, is a privilege - […]
[…] Novell, obviously, is hoping that, as public memory is woefully short, it will be able to wriggle its way back into the community. Providing such leeway is, in my opinion, a big mistake.
In my opinion, the ability to contribute to open source isn’t a privelege, it’s something that should be open to everyone, including people who’ve made mistakes in the past: and that’s precisely what the “free” in free software is all about.
OTOH, if you want to see who’s been participating most in the Linux world lately, you’re much better off looking at the list of speakers than sponsors. Novell (or at least SuSE) folks giving talks in the main conference this year seem to include John Johansen and Nick Piggin. Interestingly, the count of HP folks seems a bit low this year, with only two that I can see, which leaves them not only merely equalling Novell/SuSE, but beaten by both Intel and Catalyst. Tsk! I guess we’ll have to wait and see if that changes when we can see the list of attendees’ companies in the booklet this year…
Mon, 06 Feb 2006
Probably the thing I most love about linux.conf.au is that every year is an experiment. In 2001 we changed its name, location and time, in 2002 we tried moving it outside Sydney and Melbourne and extended the programme to cover Monday and Tuesday, in 2003 we moved it to the furthest capital we could find and trebled the events on the Monday and Tuesday, in 2004 we doubled the events on Monday and Tuesday again, worked with AUUG to add a “government” co-conference, and in 2005 we moved it out of its standard late-January timeslot into April, and added a quiz show and lightning talks. And obviously handing the conference over to a new organising team (usually with no prior experience) and a new city each year is a risk too.
LCA 2006 had quite a few interesting experimental features, not all of which were entirely deliberate.
Wed, 03 Aug 2005
So, having been out of the country for the past few weeks, I haven’t really been up on what’s been happening with Linux in Australia. Slack, I know. It seems lots has. We’ve had Jon seeking fame and fortune in the opinion pages of the IT press, we’ve had the inaugural “LA Update” podcast, we’ve had some progress on the Linux trademark in Australia, the linux.conf.au 2006 call for papers has come out (just over a month left before submissions close), some of the LCA 2005 crew have started a community mirror project under LA’s auspices, the call for papers for LinuxWorld conference/expo (to be held in Sydney, in March 2006) came out, we’ve had a rash of grant applications including the Twisted Sprint, Teen Challenge, and the ACM Training Camp.
And with the posting of this entry, I guess I get to find out whether Mr Davies has followed through on his threat to create hackergotchies for LA committee members…
Tue, 05 Jul 2005
Online Debating Is So Hot Right Now
Okay, I admit it, I left the tv on after Desperate Housewives, and not only caught Last Man Standing, but a small amount of the Hiltons’ Simple Life 3 - Interns. Anyway, having been referenced by name in the prestigious Australian IT press, how could I not continue the thread I left dangling last week?
So, the question is “if LA’s not doing anything other than LCA, how does it make any sense to have a separate group of people over and above the ones volunteering a year of their life to run the conference?” I think the answer is “but that’s not the case; LA is doing other things and should continue doing so.”
I gave a talk to HUMBUG on Saturday about LA, which was (IMO) pretty well attended. Especially since the usual staple of HUMBUG meetings – free net access so people can bring their computers along and do hands on Linux/Unix stuff – is currently absent. I’d intended to record it and then try my hand at this new-fangled podcasting stuff, but then found myself running late and completely forgot. Doh. Short summary is that it’s quite possible to fill up about three-quarters of an hour talking about LA stuff without just summarising the content at the last LCA, and the broader stuff is pretty interesting – Community Code, Open Education, Software Freedom Day, the Open Source Forums, the government participation in Linux that LA tries to facilitate, the grants scheme, and the random other things that all make use of the LA banner, whether metaphorically or literally.
Of course, while these things are interesting, that’s a different question to whether they’ll be a success or not. It’s easy to come up with a cool idea, and it’s even easy to register a domain for it, and maybe write up some of your ideas; it’s a lot harder to carry them through to fruition.
I actually think LA might be in a position this year to actually cover that gap. Naturally, I’m going to credit that to the community’s wise choice of committee members and their varied skillsets and the resulting organisational dynamic, but the fact that the Linux community has come up with a range of projects and the fact that previous committees’ activity has managed to improve LA’s mindshare within the community has resulted in a pretty large number of groups coming together around LA – and with a large enough number of attempts, you’re likely to have some successes no matter how great the difficulties. And once you’ve got some successes, you can build on them and get still more.
And that, I think, is the position LA’s in at the moment; trying to cultivate some more initial successes beyond LCA, and getting prepared to build on those successes by watching what goes right (and wrong), and having the resources marshalled to make sure those lessons can get reused.
One of the things I really enjoy about the LA community is its optimism; so when we get a story in the press that announces “[t]he future of Linux Australia (LA) is in doubt”, the response is along the lines of:
It’s great that something as trifling as a discussion of LA’s organisational structure is not only considered newsworthy, but deserving of a well-researched article. […] Coverage like this demonstrates LA’s relevence beyond the LA membership, and will hopefully invite constructive comment from the broader Australian Linux community.
Better than some possible responses anyway.
Fri, 01 Jul 2005
More minutes and such: a second face to face session (covering organisational strategy, media strategy, projects review and some other stuff) which went over a second day (covering and included a formal session, as well as two formal meetings in May, one covering general business, the other specifically for some formal LCA2006 stuff immediately after the Ghosts weekend.
Unfortunately the cool task tracker we set up at the start of the year isn’t turning out very effective. It’s got one problem in that it’s entirely public, so you can’t track topics that have any sort of “in confidence” aspect, nor can you track setup issues on LA boxes that have a security aspect. The other problem seems to be that it just hasn’t fit in with the committee’s routine, which seems harder to fix.
As a different approach, and to much eagerness from the Vice-President, we’ve setup a committee wiki which will hopefully help both with coordinating efforts within the committee and amongst other folks involved with LA, and with getting info on what’s going on out to people in a vaguely sane way. So far it’s a bit sparse. In theory, we’re also trying to blog more about LA stuff.
I guess that brings us, by way of Jon’s demurely titled blog entry Can Linux Australia survive?, to our next topic. LA’s always been an odd beast. AIUI from talking to other HUMBUGgers, it was initially noticed by the community when some LUGs wanted to get together and create a national group to organise LUGs (AusLUG, perhaps?) then someone noticed “Linux Australia” already existed in somethin of a “wtf??” moment. Bruce of HUMBUG (HUMBUG’s Democratically Elected Vice-President For Life And Beyond, well, kinda) seems to have then setup a list – and you can find the early archives of the “linux-aus” mailing list amongst HUMBUG’s list archives, including this gem:
Thu, 05 May 2005
Heh, so much for blogging regularly on LA stuff. Anyway, we’ve had more meetings since being elected, including a face to face planning session in Sydney; a couple of other meetings to keep things running, and generally been trying to run a tight ship. Jon’s President’s report goes into a bit more detail of all the stuff we’ve been trying to promote and such.
More interesting stuff on the agenda over the next couple of months too hopefully! (Including getting all those minutes and reports collated somewhere sensible, rather than just on mailing lists and blogs)
Wed, 09 Feb 2005
Well, a draft anyway. Available now from the linux-aus archives. Highlight? Announcement of the location and dates for linux.conf.au 2006!