For those of you in the Boston area, or not too far away, there's an event that I've helped plan that I think you'd find quite worthwhile. It's even cheap, as such things go, at $20 a head for members of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, and $40 for non members. It's titled the Open Source Summit, and will feature quite a few excellent panelists, including the following folks that I've known for quite a while and respect greatly:
- Karen Copenhaver, an open source licensing expert who's also a member of one of the GPL3 committees. Karen was formerly the General Counsel of Black Duck Software, before returning to private practice at local law firm Choate, Hall & Stewart
- Scott Peterson, the Senior Counsel, Intellectual Property, Hewlett-Packard Company / Andover, MA. Scott is an "expert's expert" on both open standards as well as open source, and the guy I call when I want the opinion of someone I can rely upon
- Bob Sutor, VP Standards & Open Source, IBM, who regular readers of this blog will know is the top guy at IBM on ODF strategy, as well as much more formidible blogger.
One of the principle topics will be the latest on GPL3 and What it All Means, which is to say what it all means up to that minute in the unfolding story, as told by quite a few folks that are very much in the middle of things, not only on the drafting side, but on the market side as well, such as (in addition to Bob Sutor):
- Larry Alston, VP of Corporate Strategy, Iona
- Don Fisher, VP of Online Services, Red Hat
- Justin Steinman, Director of Linux Marketing, Novell
There’s quite a bit more, such as “Lightning Round” presentations by some of the more interesting local emerging companies, such as Drupal, Plone, and SugarCRM (and four more). And by the way – we have room for a few more (see the information below on who to talk to).
Another point of interest will be a keynote by Ivan Krsti, Director of Security for the One Laptop Per Child project, who will describe the OLPC’s open source plans and progress – as well as demo the production model for all.
There will be plenty of time for Q&A at each step along the way, so a splendid and informative time should be had by all.
The registration link is here: http://function.masstlc.org/programs_new/event_single.cfm?eventid=787 and the full program fis as follows:
Open Source Summit
Tuesday, June 19, 2007; 7:30 am registration; 8-12:00 pm
Join us for this half-day summit as technology leaders discuss the current state of open source and the implementation of collaborative development models. The program will spotlight innovative open source companies in a rapid fire lightning round session. The summit will culminate with a keynote presentation on OLPC (One Laptop Per Child), an initiative lead by Nicholas Negroponte, as recently featured on 60 Minutes.
8:00 am — Opening Remarks
8:15 am — The Year in Review and the Years to Come: GPL3 and what it tells us about the current and future prospects of free and open source software.
- Karen Copenhaver, Partner, Choate Hall & Stewart
- Ira Heffan, Associate, Goodwin Proctor
- Scott K. Peterson, Senior Counsel, Intellectual Property, Hewlett-Packard Company / Andover, MA
- David Rickerby, Partner, Choate, Hall & Stewart
9:00 am — Open Source Strategies
- Larry Alston, VP of Corporate Strategy, Iona
- Robert Sutor, VP Standards & Open Source, IBM
- Don Fisher, VP of Online Services, Red Hat
- Justin Steinman, Director of Linux Marketing, Novell
10:00 am — Break10:15 am — Lightning Rounds
- Andromeda
- BlackDuckDev
- Zuz (Simula labs)
- Drupal
- enterpriseDB
- Plone 3.0
- SugarCRM
Please contact the Open Source Cluster Advisory Board at tom@masstlc.org if you are interested in presenting during the lightning round session.
11:15 am — OLPC Keynote Ivan Krsti, Director of Security Architecture, OLPC
One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a non-profit organization aiming to redefine learning and education for the world’s children by providing each child with a specially-developed, innovative, and low-cost laptop. We will introduce the initiative and then dive into the challenging engineering behind the OLPC software platform, covering everything from its unusual firmware to its new child-friendly GUI. A member of each of the four GPL 3 Committees will review the new license, the process by which it was promulgated, and what it all tells us about the current state of free and open source software.
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