SEBASTOPOL, CA--The mainstreaming of open source
software accelerated on Friday, August 21, when over 300 people attended
O'Reilly & Associates' Open Source
Developer Day and Town Meeting in San Jose, CA. Attendees heard
Yahoo co-founder David Filo say that his company couldn't have built the
world's largest web site without FreeBSD, Apache, and Perl--all open
source software. IBM's James Barry told the audience how IBM came to
realize that Apache was the best choice for the web server at the heart of
the WebSphere Application Server. And Jim Hamerly of Netscape explained
how his company developed licenses for its Communicator product that both
promote open source development and protect corporate interests.
Open Source Developer Day had a practical focus. Eric Raymond, author
of the influential paper "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," kicked off the
program with a keynote that chronicled the rapid growth of the open source
movement in the past year. His talk was followed by panel presentations on
managing distributed open source projects, open source business models,
and licensing and legal issues. Panelists were open source pioneers and
innovators, including Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU Project and the
Free Software Foundation; Larry Wall, creator of Perl; Brian Behlendorf, a
founder of the Apache group and Vice President of Web Applications, C2Net
Software; John Ousterhout, CEO, Scriptics Corp. and creator of the Tcl
scripting language; Michael Tiemann, Co-founder, Cygnus Solutions; Bob
Young, President, Red Hat Software; Jeremy Allison, member of the Samba
Team; and Pamela Samuelson, Professor at the University of California at
Berkeley and Co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.
At the end of the day, another 100 people joined the crowd for the Open
Source Town Meeting, which was moderated by Tim O'Reilly, President and
CEO of O'Reilly & Associates. Attendees' questions flushed out the
philosophical differences between panelists and provoked a spirited
discussion on the pros and cons of commercializing open source software.
Scriptics Corp. CEO John Ousterhout elicited strong support when he made a
case for the value of bringing business knowledge-and funding-to open
source development efforts. At the other end of the spectrum, Richard
Stallman, founding father of the free software movement, reiterated his
long-held belief that all users should have the freedom to copy and change
any software they use.
Twenty-eight businesses and organizations that have a stake in the
continued development of open source software signed on as Partners in
Open Source Developer Day. Representatives staffed tables at the event,
providing information and demonstrations to attendees. Partners were:
- AbiSource
- Apache Group
- C2Net
- Corel Computer
- Cyclades Corporation
- Cygnus Solutions
- FreeBSD
- Free Software Foundation
- Linux International
- Linux Journal
- NetBSD Project
- Netscape
- Penguin Computing
- Perl Journal
- Red Hat Software
- The Samba Team
- Scriptics Corporation (Tcl)
- Sendmail, Inc.
- SGI
- Silicon Valley Linux User Group/LINC
- Songline Studios
- Summit Software
- SuSE
- USENIX
- VA Research
- Walnut Creek CD-ROM
- Whistle Communications
- Xemacs Project
