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ZD Announces Open Source Conference 36

Posted by CmdrTaco from the oo!-I-wanna-play-too! dept.
James Renken writes "Ziff-Davis has announced the "Open Source Forum", a two-day "IT executive conference focused on Linux and other emerging open source software and the implications of this new software on 'mainstream' business applications development and the enterprise s oftware industry." The event will be in Palmer Auditorium in Austin, Texas, on June 30th and July 1st."
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ZD Announces Open Source Conference More

ZD Announces Open Source Conference

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  • And it's been the 90's for nine years! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Right you are. After all, "Open Source" or "free software" or "freed software" or whatever you prefer to call it isn't "new", despite ZD's language. It's only "new" to the businesspeople who are just now discovering it. The Internet was "new" to them in 1996, too (which is why some people will believe Al Gore's ridiculous claim). It's certainly no coincidence that people are learning about free software soon after they learned about the Internet--the two go hand in hand. But neither of them are "new". Most so-called "new" technology isn't really new, anyway.

    I guess something doesn't exist in this world until the media and business community "discover" it. It's kind of like Columbus "discovering" America, isn't it? Once you know it's there, you can claim it for Spain (without even knowing what "it" is), plant your flag (or .com), and pretend to be a "civilizing" influence on the "savage" natives. :-\
  • Posted by casp3r:

    i have been waiting for something fun to come to texas (i'm in houston) for a while. i'm glad to see this happening.
  • To: webmaster@zd.com
    Subject: zdopensource.com

    Your Web site, http://www.zdopensource.com, advertises the event as "the only event this year that can help you to assess the real potential for Linux and other open source software as a solution for your businesses.", yet the ZDNet Web team do not seem to think that open source software is good enough for Web content creation.

    When viewing the page with Netscape Communicator 4.08 on a Linux machine, I see the following text:

    "Focused on the ?mainstreaming? of open source software..."

    These question marks are the result of using authoring tools under Microsoft Windows, where so-called "smart quotes" are given special locations in the character set. More standards-compliant character sets do not have these proprietary extensions, and so substitute the missing symbols with question marks.

    A discussion on the phenomenon can be read at http://slashdot.org/articles/99/02/06/0220242.shtm l and a variety of tools for repairing the damage caused by your proprietary tools can be had at http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/demoroniser/ .

    --
  • Before anyone gets all excited (I live in Austin), the conference costs $595. Ironic that a conference about free software costs so much. I suppose that since OSS advocates want programmers to work for free, the money needs to come from somewhere, right?

    --
    Timur Tabi
    Remove "nospam_" from email address
  • Not only has ZDnet a linux page/site, it also has a Linux FUD rebuttal page that offers the opportunity to answer FUD. They sure are spreading it, but at least they seem to be open for criticism.

  • Anyone remember who RMS once said that O'Reilly was a virus that played off Open Source. I wonder what he would have to say about ZDNet then? I mean they can almost never get their information right, its like they don't have copy editors. They are also something of a FUD Factory. I suppose its only going to be a matter of time until we hear about this from RMS. Kinda reminds me of MS Developers Network putting on an open source conference or something like that.
  • It might be nice to meet some of the crowd in person- if they go... I do know I'll probably go- it's in Austin, a short 4 hour (or less... :-) drive would be nice in the middle of the week and I know my employer WILL pay me to go to this one... :->

  • Well, the one difference is that we're spreading our culture over to them, and hopefully they won't destroy this one.

    Shrug.
  • Penguins don't have 4 legs. They have _wings_ Think about it :)

  • The phrase "IT executives" is a Big Red Flag to me. Having dealt with my share of IT Executives, I'm guessing this is a lovefest on how to "allow" Linux systems to operate with a minimum of problems on your precious NT-run network without breaking anything.

    Conference agenda items are sure to include:

    • Linux and EMail: Transitioning from MS Exchange to 'sendmail'.
    • Robust File Sharing: Setting Up NFS Clients on Windoze Systems.
    • Security: No. Really. You Only Need Sixteen Permission Bits.
    • Procurement Strategies: Justifying Existing Budget Up-Trends Despite Linux's Increased Scalability.
    • Network Administration: No. Really. You Only Need IP.
    • Network Tuning: Using 'qwcl' as a Network Performance Monitor.
    • System Administration Tools: EMACS for MS Word Users.
    • Remote System Administration: How To Launch 'telnet'.
    • License Administration: How to Use the 'cp' Command.
    • Management vs. Engineering Infrastructure: The Geeks Get The Gigabit Switch.
    • Personnel Retraining: Learning to Use '/' Instead of '\'.

      Schwab

  • Before ppl start flaming away at ZD (which is now a reflex action), take the time and look at the schedule for this conference. The three keynote speakers are, ESR, Love, and O'Reilly. No real surprises here. As far as the various panels, I get the impression that the conference will be a favorable one.

    Remember that PHB's want to hear from other PHB's. The more enlightened one's (for instance, the CIO of Burlington Coat Factory) have implemented Linux; hopefully, their experience has been a good one. The sheep (the other PHB's) will then follow their lead and go bleating back to their bosses. Sort of like Animal Farm: Four legs good (linux), two legs bad (NT).

    Finally, our favorite ZD writer is not listed in the schedule.
  • Well, just like Animal Farm the mantra mysteriously changes (IIRC), "Four legs good, two legs better.":) This, of course, has other implications. A gnu has four legs...
  • Sorry for the useless post but...

    BWAHAHAHAHAHA! pant pant HAHAHAHAHAHA

    That's the funniest post I've read in weeks...

    Thanks ewhac!

  • The thing that bugs me most about this is that they are essentially locking out much of the driving force behind open source, the college student :) and joe linux developer. $600 is too much for me. I never have enough time to make it to Austin for their lug meetings, either.
    I just wish that they'd drop that price tag :)

  • Austin (Score:1)

    by jarod ( 15787 )
    Finally, something comes to Austin!

    You have SXSW. Which is quite possibly the coolest conf.
  • Buzzword city. Ever get the impression that half the people referring to "Open Source" don't have a clue what the hell they're talking about? Before we know it, Al Gore will take credit for it. :)
  • Heh, we have Sandra Bullock...

    Jim
  • Perhaps they ZDnet is afraid that these young'ns might actually understand the technology better than they do and will give the PHBs... Uhm, I mean *IT Professionals*, unbiased information. ;-) Thad
  • Is this really worth the price of attending ($595US)and hotel stay (overly priced here in Austin)? Everyone here pretty much knows the score about Open Source, it seems like "preaching to the choir".
  • Some kind of a Linux conference finally comes to Austin, and it's this? Somehow, I just can't get excited about wanting to go... [Maybe it's the cost.]
  • Persons under the age of 18 (including infants in strollers and backpacks) will not be admitted.

    I can understand that, sorta, seeing as how this is for enterprise IT management... But infants in backpacks? Huh?
  • A conference on how to exploit,the open source community,for fun and profit .
  • This reminds me of a thing in PC Mag years and years back. It was called the "IBM Obfuscation Elimination Facility". In its heyday IBM would take a rather ordinary object and slap an impressive-sounding name on it with lots of big words, selling it at highly inflated prices with the IBM brand and these fancy names. Example: They'd stick a serial cable in a bag and sell it at perhaps twice its original price with the name "IBM PC Data Migration Facility" on it. Another good one they came up with: the familiar "Service Pack" for a bug fix. The Obfuscation Elimination Facility was a chart showing you the device's common name and its IBM Name.


    ZDnet I've found is not the most reliable source of information in the world, but they're not all Microsoft shills, either. (Dvorak was talking about how cool Linux was in '96 and '97!) Yes, they are most definitely targeting the Wintel-based market because that's how they can fatten the number of subscribers. It's good to see that they occasionally show signs of objectivity and rationality. :)

  • Great! That means more students for us here! Stevens has been really pumping up its usiness school recently, especially their trendy new "e-business" program. I'm not too fond of all the hype but there's a large contingency of hackers here, and most of the networking is (for the moment) Unix-based (Irix, Solaris, Linux) so at least the business majors here will be working with people and technology that do, more or less, the Right Thing. Maybe some of those UT students will get disgruntled and make the trek up here to continue their studies. Just what we need... more suits in training :)

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