Linux Foundation Announcements

Linux Foundation Appoints Ted Ts’o to Position of Chief Technology Officer

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 19:28:05 +0000

Linux Foundation Appoints Ted Ts’o to Position of Chief Technology Office

Linux Kernel Developer Ted Ts’o to lead Linux Standard Base and ISV relationships, among other initiatives

SAN FRANCISCO, December 18, 2008 – The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that Linux kernel developer Theodore Ts’o has been named to the position of Chief Technology Officer at the Foundation.

Ts’o is currently a Linux Foundation fellow, a position he has been in since December 2007. He is one of the most highly regarded members of the Linux and open source community and is known as the first North American kernel developer. Other current and past LF fellows include Steve Hemminger, Andrew Morton, Linus Torvalds and Andrew Tridgell.

Ts’o will be replacing Markus Rex as CTO of the Linux Foundation. Rex was on loan to the Foundation from his employer Novell. He recently returned to Novell to work as the acting general manager and senior vice president of Novell’s OPS business unit.

As CTO, Ts’o will lead all technical initiatives for the Linux Foundation, including oversight of the Linux Standard Base (LSB) and other workgroups such as Open Printing. He will also be the primary technical interface to LF members and the LF’s Technical Advisory Board, which represents the kernel community.

“Ted is an invaluable member of the Linux Foundation team, and we’re happy he is available to assume the role of CTO where his contributions will be critical to the advancement of Linux,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. “We’re also very grateful to Markus Rex for his assignment at the Foundation and thank him and Novell for their commitments to Linux and the LSB.”

“I continue to believe in power of mass collaboration and the work that can be done by a community of developers, users and industry members,” said Ted Ts’o, chief technology officer at The Linux Foundation. “I’m looking forward to translating that power into concrete milestones for the LSB specifically, and for Linux overall, in the year ahead.”

Since 2001, Ts’o has worked as a senior technical staff member at IBM where he most recently led a worldwide team to create an enterprise-level real-time Linux solution. He will return to IBM after this two-year fellowship at The Linux Foundation.

Ts’o has been recognized throughout the Linux and open source communities for his contributions to free software, including being awarded the 2006 Award for the Advancement of Free Software by the Free Software Foundation (FSF).

Ts’o is also a Linux kernel developer, a role in which he serves as ext4 filesystem maintainer, as well as the primary author and
maintainer of e2fsprogs, the userspace utilities for the ext2, ext3, and ext4 filesystems. He is the founder and chair of the annual Linux Kernel Developers’ Summit and regularly teaches tutorials on Linux and other open source software. Ts’o was project leader for Kerberos, a network authentication system used by Red Hat Enteprise Linux, SUSE Enterprise Linux and Microsoft Windows. He was also a member of Security Area Directorate for the Internet Engineering Task Force where he chaired the IP Security (ipsec) Working Group and was a founding board member of the Free Standards Group (FSG). Ts’o studied computer science at MIT, where he received his degree in 1990.

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.

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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.

Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board Elects New Members

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:22:02 +0000

Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board Elects New Members

Peer-elected board brings community perspective to The Linux Foundation

SAN FRANCISCO, December 9, 2008 – The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced the results of its 2008 Technical Advisory Board (TAB) election, which drew record numbers of candidates and voters.

The TAB consists of ten members of the Linux kernel community, who are annually elected by their peers to serve staggered, two-year terms. The TAB collaborates with The Linux Foundation on programs and issues that affect the Linux community. The TAB chair also sits on the board of The Linux Foundation.

The newest board members, elected to serve two-year terms, are:

• James Bottomley, Linux Kernel maintainer of the SCSI subsystem, the Linux Voyager port and the 53c700 driver;
• Kristen Carlson Accardi, kernel developer at Intel and contributor to the ACPI, PCI, and SATA subsystems;
• Christoph Hellwig, (one-year term), software architect and developer in the storage software sector;
• Chris Mason, Oracle Kernel development team and creator of the Btrfs file system;
• Dave Jones, maintainer of the Fedora kernel at Red Hat; and
• Chris Wright, employed by Red Hat, maintainer for the LSM framework, and co-maintainer of the -stable Linux kernel tree.

The TAB is completed with the remaining four members, who are serving out the rest of their two-year terms: Jonathan Corbet, Greg Kroah-Hartman, Christoph Lameter and Arjan Van de Ven.

“The Technical Advisory Board plays a key role in helping the Linux Foundation and its members understand how best to collaborate on projects that help advance the Linux operating system for all its stakeholders,” said Amanda McPherson, vice president of marketing and developer programs for The Linux Foundation. “We highly value the contributions of the community in the Foundation, and the TAB ensures that we stay focused on core priorities that have a positive and direct impact on their work.”

The TAB participates in The Linux Foundation’s annual events, such as its Annual Collaboration Summit taking place in San Francisco in 2009. The TAB and other community members will also participate in the first ever LinuxCon, scheduled for next fall. More information on Linux Foundation events can be found here: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/events/

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Linux Foundation Workgroup Tackles Federal Mandate for Next-Generation Internet Protocol

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:22:44 +0000

Linux Foundation Workgroup Tackles Federal Mandate for Next-Generation Internet Protocol

Collaborative effort helps Linux “distros” obtain IPv6 certification

SAN FRANCISCO – November 24, 2008 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that its IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6) Workgroup has enabled the major Linux “distros” to meet the U.S. Federal Government’s Department of Defense (DOD) mandate and certification requirements for this next generation Internet protocol.

IPv6 is the next-generation Internet protocol designed to replace the current version, IPv4, which has been used for nearly 20 years. Due to the explosive growth of the Internet, it is expected that IPv4 addresses will be exhausted within just a few short years, resulting in an urgency for IPv6 compliance.

To accelerate IPv6 migration, the U.S. Federal Government put into place a mandate for all of its agencies to meet the next-generation Internet protocol requirements for any computing and networking equipment they acquire.

The Linux Foundation, with leadership from Venkata Jagana, Senior Technical Staff Member and Chief Architect of Networking within IBM’s Linux Technology Center, formed a Linux IPv6 Workgroup to collaboratively address this major undertaking and enable Linux-based machines to be next-generation Internet ready out of the box. Other active workgroup participants included HP, Nokia-Siemens, Novell and Red Hat.

“In early 2000, IBM recognized the need for Linux to be both IPv6 compliant and interoperable and started making development contributions by working with the Linux community and distros,” said Kathy Bennett of IBM’s Linux Technology Center. “Today, that effort, along with Linux Foundation’s IPv6 WG efforts, have benefited the Linux industry in achieving the Department of Defense IPv6 certification at a level which is leading in the industry.”

“The IPv6 mandate and ensuing requirements are such major undertakings that it makes it difficult for any one company to deal with it all on its own,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “This is exactly the kind of work and collaboration that the Linux Foundation can facilitate, and which results in real technology advancements for the Linux operating system.”

The Linux Foundation IPv6 Workgroup reviewed the mandate requirements and performed a detailed IPv6 gap analysis to identify where Linux needed to be adapted. As a result, existing Linux features, such as ICMPv6, DHCPv6, MIB support and IPSec for IPv6, are now updated to conform to the Department of Defense requirements.

For more information on the Linux Foundation’s IPv6 Workgroup and its analysis, please visit the IPv6 Workgroup website.

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Linux Foundation Publishes Study Estimating the Value of Linux

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 05:33:53 +0000

Linux Foundation Publishes Study Estimating the Value of Linux

New report finds the value of developing a Linux distribution to be worth $10.8 billion

SAN FRANCISCO – October 22, 2008 – The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced it is publishing a new report written by Amanda McPherson, Brian Proffitt and Ron Hale-Evans on the value of Linux development. The paper finds that it would take approximately $10.8 billion to build the Linux community distribution Fedora 9 in today’s dollars with today’s software development costs. It would take $1.4 billion to develop the Linux kernel alone.

The report, titled “Estimating the Total Development Cost of a Linux Distribution,” is available today.

This report is an update of a 2002 study done by David A. Wheeler that examined the Software Lines of Code (SLOC) present in a typical Linux distribution (Red Hat Linux 7.1). At that time, Wheeler found that it would cost over $1.2 billion to develop a Linux distribution by conventional proprietary means in the U.S.

The authors examined the Fedora 9 distribution using Wheeler’s tools and methods, specifically the SLOCCount tool that estimates value and effort of software development based on the COnstructive COst MOdel (COCOMO). The report goes into detail on the methods used, how they specifically apply to the Fedora distribution and the Linux kernel, and what an estimate of Linux’ value really means.

Highlights of the paper include:

– How Much Does a Full Distribution Cost?
Using 2008 salary figures, the tests published in the paper revealed that if developed today, the full set of Fedora 9 distribution packages would cost $10.8 billion. The Fedora 9 distribution contains 204.5 million lines of code in 5547 application packages. The development effort estimate comes close to 60,000 Person-Years.

– How Much Does the Linux Kernel Cost?
Applying this test to the Linux kernel included in Fedora 9 found the value to be 6.8 million lines of code worth $1.4 billion. The development effort estimate for the kernel alone exceeds 7500 Person-Years.

– How Does This Really Measure the Value of Linux?
This study reveals that collaborative development creates enormous economic value. In the past two years alone, over 3,200 developers from 200 companies have contributed to the kernel. An even larger number has contributed to full Linux distributions. Measuring the economic effort involved is imperfect, but this report clarifies why the methodology is the best approach and some of the limitations.

”This year has seen an incredible proliferation of Linux-powered devices outside of traditional Linux strongholds: devices powered by the Moblin platform, netbooks like the eeePC, mobile phones like the Gphone, and consumer devices like the Amazon Kindle. Would these products be possible without Linux?” said McPherson. “I think this points to the power of the collaborative development model. Monopolistic software companies used to be able to fund heavy R&D budgets, keeping out competition. Given the cost associated with building an OS like Linux, one wonders if proprietary companies will ever go it alone again.”

Amanda McPherson is vice president, marketing and developer programs, at the LF and leads its promotion, developer, and community-relations activities. Brian Proffitt is community manager with the LF, managing the Linux Developer Network. Ron Hale-Evans is senior specifications writer with the LF and works closely with the Linux Standard Base (LSB) developer team to create LSB specifications.

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The Linux Foundation’s FOSSBazaar Nearly Doubles its Membership

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 18:42:39 +0000

The Linux Foundation’s FOSSBazaar Nearly Doubles its Membership

Leading Linux consortia announces new members to participate in open source software governance initiative

SAN FRANCISCO, October 14, 2008 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux and open source software, today announced that its Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) governance workgroup, called FOSSBazaar, has nearly doubled its membership since launching in January.

The newest members include Ars Aperta, Black Duck, BT, Krugle, Palamida, and nexB, which contribute to 15 total members today.

Like proprietary software, FOSS requires due diligence to ensure legal, financial and security compliance. FOSSBazaar is the Linux and open source community’s approach to sustaining FOSS as a dependable choice for IT departments.

During its inaugural year, FOSSBazaar has both established an online destination where collaboration on these topics takes place (https://fossbazaar.org) and appointed full-time workgroup community leader Martin Michlmayr. Michlmayr is a well-known figure that currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Open Source Initiative (OSI). He has been involved in FOSS projects for more than 10 years, including having led the Debian project for two years. FOSSBazaar has also participated in collaborative forums this year such as the Annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit and OSCON.
“Software is increasingly comprised of components that are assembled from the open source community and other external sources,” said Bill McQuaide, Executive Vice President of Products and Services, Black Duck Software. “We are pleased to be joining the FOSSBazaar team who shares our commitment to evangelizing open source and educating software developers about how to use it safely and effectively.”
Jeremy Ruston, head of Open Source Innovation at BT Design said: “We believe that evolving good governance for FOSS is best done collaboratively, giving organizations the opportunity to share best practices and learn from one another. Through becoming a strategic partner in FOSSBazaar, we are pleased to have the opportunity to work alongside industry peers to make a valuable contribution to the FOSS community and play a key role in advancing the state of the art in FOSS governance.”

“nexB is very pleased to join FOSSBazaar because it fosters an open solution to leveraging and managing open source software in software products and enterprise IT,” said Philippe Ombredanne, CTO at nexB. “The best solutions for the open source software supply chain will come from applying open source methods and tools to the challenges at hand.”

“We are pleased to be joining FOSSBazaar,” said Mark Tolliver, CEO of Palamida. “It has rapidly become a highly valuable community site and we look forward to adding our expertise in open source management practices to make it even better and, as a result, to enable more organizations to realize the benefits of an open source strategy.”

FOSSBazaar was created as a Linux Foundation workgroup in order to share information and best practices for the adoption and management of open source software by enterprises, institutions and governments. The initiative was founded by Coverity, DLA Piper, Google, HP, the Linux Foundation, Novell, Olliance Group, OpenLogic and SourceForge.

About the Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is a non-profit 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 on the Linux Foundation please visit www.linuxfoundation.org.

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Untangle Joins The Linux Foundation

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:16:10 +0000

Untangle Joins The Linux Foundation

Open source network gateway company Untangle increases community involvement with Foundation membership; academic affiliates also join the organization

SAN FRANCISCO – October 7, 2008 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that Untangle is the newest member of the Foundation.

Untangle, developers of the Open Source Network Gateway, is joining the Linux Foundation as a way to further contribute to the open source community. It plans to take advantage of the exclusive Linux Foundation events and to collaborate with the Foundation on outreach to Linux User Groups (LUGs) throughout the globe.

“The increasing adoption of Linux and open source software depends on our collective efforts. We’re excited to join the growing community of Linux Foundation participants,” said Bob Walters, Untangle CEO. “Untangle has benefited greatly from the mass collaboration that the Linux Foundation facilitates and we’re proud to publicly support them and their mission.”

“Untangle has a long history of giving back to the community, and Its membership in the Linux Foundation is a natural extension of those actions,” said Amanda McPherson, vice president of marketing and developer programs at The Linux Foundation. “We’ve been very supportive of their impressive community and product efforts and are pleased to work more closely with them.”

Earlier this year, Untangle held its inaugural Installfest for Schools, which helped refurbish 350 computers with Ubuntu Linux for schools. In August, it held a second installfest at LinuxWorld in San Francisco where 750 additional computers were refurbished for schools. For more information on the Installfest for Schools please visit: http://www.untangle.com/installfest

Other recent additions to the Linux Foundation’s membership include the following universities at the academic affiliate level:

• Open Cyber University http://www.ocu.ac.kr/foreign/english/index.asp

• Oulu University of Applied Sciences, Raahe School of Engineering & Business
http://www.oamk.fi/raahe/english/

Linux Foundation Launches New Linux Event – LinuxCon – and Announces 2009 Event Lineup

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:14:43 +0000

Linux Foundation Launches New Linux Event – LinuxCon – and Announces 2009 Event Lineup

New annual technical conference will enable collaboration and education on Linux in North America

SAN FRANCISCO, September 30, 2008 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced the creation of LinuxCon, a new annual technical conference that will be produced in the spirit of open source development – for the community, by the community. The Foundation today is also announcing the details for important Linux events including its annual Collaboration Summit and the Kernel Summit.

LinuxCon 2009 will take place September 2009 in Portland, Oregon, the open source “mecca” of North America. It will be co-located with the annual Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC), which attracts a star-studded pool of technical talent. The first LPC, held this month, gathered together 300 leaders from the development community for face-to-face discussions and technical problem solving.

LinuxCon will include paper-based technical conference sessions, tutorials, keynotes, a technology showcase and targeted mini-summits on topics such as mobile, desktop and embedded, and much more. The Linux Foundation will work with community and industry groups to provide a place for mini-summits and other collaboration vehicles.

“LinuxCon will be where the best and the brightest from the Linux community share their knowledge with papers-based conference sessions, passionate discussions, and hands-on technical sessions,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director, The Linux Foundation. “This is not a top-down, for-profit conference controlled by a commercial entity. This is for the community, by the community.”

“LinuxCon will be a great opportunity for everyone who cares about the
success of Linux to learn, connect and collaborate,” said Kristen Accardi,
Kernel Developer and one of the founders of the Linux Plumbers Conference.

“LinuxCon will meet a crucial need for the community. We don’t have a single forum where Linux contributors and users can collaborate on real issues at every level,” said Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier, community manager, openSUSE. “The Linux Foundation is in a unique position to bring together the right people and ingredients for hands-on collaboration and productive networking. I won’t miss it.”

“As a worldwide Linux market leader and founding member of the Linux
Foundation, HP is committed to helping customers deploy Linux for
increased compute power, flexibility and IT efficiencies,” said Bdale
Garbee, Open Source & Linux Chief Technologist, HP. “We welcome a
comprehensive industry conference that takes us back to our roots and
offers developers, the user community and customers new research,
educational sessions and testimonials to speed market development of
open source alternatives.”

For LinuxCon, “community” is an inclusive concept, meaning that everyone with a stake in Linux is welcome. Linux developers will meet and learn from their peers and teach others, such as students and up-and-coming developers. Linux users can avoid the tradeshow environment while educating themselves on the latest technical advances of the Linux platform. And, whether vendors, users or developers are Linux veterans or new to the community, LinuxCon will connect them to the right people and the right information. Its co-location with the LPC and the support of the Linux Foundation will ensure that LinuxCon is attended by the most important leaders in Linux.

To support its growing events program, the Linux Foundation is also welcoming Craig Ross, co- founder of the Linux Symposium. Ross will join the Linux Foundation as Community Relations Manager.

Co-Locating with the Linux Foundation: Embedded Linux and Storage and File System Conferences

The Linux Foundation today is also announcing the dates and locations for its other popular annual events, including the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit. Now in its third year, the Collaboration Summit will take place April 8 -10, 2009 in San Francisco, home to the Linux Foundation’s headquarters. It will be co-located with the CELF Embedded Linux Conference and the Linux Storage and Filesystem Workshop, which will enable the Linux community to save on travel and time while accelerating collaboration within its ranks.

Also announced today is next year’s Kernel Summit dates and location. The Kernel Summit will be held in Tokyo from October 18-20, 2009 and will be co-located with the new annual Linux Foundation Tokyo Symposium. This event will build on the Foundation’s existing Japan Symposium and will mature into a large-scale technical conference that brings together developers from throughout Japan and across Asia with the goal of increasing Linux education and development in these countries.

These events are in addition to previously announced events, including the End User Summit on Wall Street this October. The Linux Foundation also hosts a variety of regional and smaller-scale events to cater to an increasing need for forums that are focused on specific aspects of the Linux Platform that apply to large enterprise users, embedded systems makers, developers and vendors.

For more information about LinuxCon or the other 2009 Linux Foundation events, please write to events@linuxfoundation.org or check out www.linux-foundation.org/events.

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CME Group Joins The Linux Foundation

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:56:18 +0000

CME Group Joins The Linux Foundation

World’s largest derivatives exchange uses Linux to help manage trades in interest rates, equity indexes, currencies, and commodities

SAN FRANCISCO, September 23, 2008 – The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that CME Group, the world’s largest and most diverse derivatives exchange, has become a member of the Foundation.

CME Group has been recognized as one of the financial services industry’s biggest users of Linux. It first realized the benefits of Linux in 2003 when it reported that by using the operating system it would save significant costs, increase reliability, and dramatically reduce the round-trip time of a trade transaction. Since then, broader use and newer versions of Linux coupled with match engine and application improvements have helped continue that trend. In an industry where low latency is paramount, this reduction extended the fundamental savings of Linux by enabling more transactions to be made in a given day.

By joining the Linux Foundation, CME Group will be able to collaborate with key Linux developer and vendors. CME Group’s Vinod Kutty, associate director and head of distributed computing R&D, will become chair of the Linux Foundation’s End User Council. The Council is a group of the largest Linux end users who use the forum to collaborate and educate themselves on technical, legal and community efforts.

Kutty will also speak at the Linux Foundation’s End User Summit October 13 – 14, 2008, in New York where collaboration visionaries will share insights on the Linux development process. For more information on the Summit, please visit https://www.linuxfoundation.org/events/enduser.

“Our Linux Foundation membership allows us to move beyond just being users of Linux to being participants in the direction of this important technology,” said Kevin Kometer, Managing Director and Chief Information Officer of CME Group. “Joining the Linux Foundation and being deeply involved in Linux will also help the exchange determine the future use of our own technology. We’re looking forward to working closely with the Linux community to navigate this future.”

“The stability and flexibility of Linux fits so well in the financial world. It’s an extremely demanding environment,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. “We’re looking forward to CME Group’s contribution to Linux Foundation events and to vendor and developer understanding of what kinds of requirements large financial institutions have of Linux.”

In 2007, CME Group (www.cmegroup.com) traded a record 2.2 billion CME and CBOT contracts worth more than $1.2 quadrillion.

Building on the heritage of CME, CBOT and NYMEX, CME Group serves the risk management needs of customers around the globe. As an international marketplace, CME Group brings buyers and sellers together on the CME Globex® electronic trading platform and on trading floors in Chicago and New York. CME Group offers the widest range of benchmark products available across all major asset classes, including futures and options based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural commodities, metals, and alternative investment products such as weather and real estate.

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.

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Black Duck Joins The Linux Foundation

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 04:25:47 +0000

Black Duck Joins The Linux Foundation

BlackDuck joins Linux consortium to collaborate with industry’s leading open source legal experts

SAN FRANCISCO – September 10, 2008 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that Black Duck Software has joined as a Foundation member. Black Duck provides solutions for software development teams and legal counsel to manage the hybrid software development process, which involves the assembly of internal software, open source software and other third-party code.

As more and more companies include open source in their applications, they are creating policies to manage the proper use of the code, taking into account legal obligations on copyrights. Black Duck will work with the Linux Foundation and its members to collaborate on legal programs that support software development including Linux and open source. The Linux Foundation is home to legal summits that provide an important vendor-neutral forum for leading in-house counsels from member companies HP, IBM, Intel, Novell, Oracle, Red Hat and now Black Duck, among others.

“Corporate counsels, outside law firms and internal software development teams have relied on Black Duck’s solutions for many years; indeed many very large enterprises have deployed Black Duck’s solutions to save developer time and reduce cost by providing a framework for hybrid development,” said Bill McQuaide, executive vice president of products and services at Black Duck Software. “For this reason, we look forward to lending our expertise to The Linux Foundation, which provides a forum for bringing users, vendors and developers together to discuss the evolving legal landscape in the open source software market.”

“Understanding the legal nuances of software has been an important topic for proprietary and open source software users and vendors for decades,” said Amanda McPherson, vice president, marketing and developer programs at The Linux Foundation. “But until now, companies didn’t have a neutral forum in which to discuss these seemingly sensitive matters. We’re happy to welcome Black Duck to participate in these valuable discussions.”

The next Linux Foundation Legal Summit will take place October 14 – 15, 2008 at IBM’s Hawthorne, New York facility. This event follows the Legal Summit in April of this year that took place at Motorola Customer Briefing Center in Schaumburg, Ill. The first LF Legal Summit was held October 25 - 26, 2007 in Boston and focused on effective ways to collaborate in the development of compliance, education programs, and evolving intellectual property rights policies optimized to support open development models.

For more details on this fall’s Legal Summit, please visit us here.

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The Linux Foundation Announces End User Collaboration Summit

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:13:32 +0000

The Linux Foundation Announces End User Collaboration Summit

New Event will drive collaboration between Linux developers
and end users

SAN FRANCISCO – August 27, 2008 — The Linux Foundation, the non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced the first Linux Foundation End User Collaboration Summit. The summit is a unique opportunity for end users to learn and interact with leaders from within the Linux community, including the highest level maintainers and developers.

The inaugural summit will take place October 13-14, 2008, at the Desmond Tutu Center in New York, New York and will provide end users a direct connection and voice to the kernel community. It will also give Linux community maintainers and developers direct access to knowledge sharing opportunities with the users of their software.

The event was created at the request of the Linux Foundation’s Technical Advisory Board, which is comprised of key Linux community members. By bringing together sophisticated end users and senior Linux developers, the Linux Foundation hopes to accelerate innovation and adoption of Linux.

Highlights of the Linux Foundation End User Summit will include:

• An address from Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian, which will include a Q&A with the Linux Foundation’s executive director Jim Zemlin.

• A discussion with Paul Cormier, executive vice president and president, Products and Technologies, Red Hat.

• One-on-one discussions between end users and key Linux maintainers James Bottomley, Dave Jones, Christoph Lameter, Chris Mason, Andrew Morton, Arjan van de Ven, Chris Wright, and many more.

• A panel featuring notable Linux end users from the New York Stock Exchange, The Chicago Mercantile Exchange, AIG, Credit Suisse, Fidelity National Information Services, and more.

• A keynote address from Anthony Williams, co-author of the best-selling book Wikinomics, on how mass collaboration is changing the economics of the software industry, with far reaching implications for end users.

• Jon Corbet from LWN.net will present the Linux Weather Forecast, with a spotlight on where the Linux kernel is headed in the next 12 to 24 months.

• A candid discussion about end user participation in Linux with Rishab Ghosh and Red Monk’s Stephen O’Grady.

“The open source development model is unique. End users not only give feedback on the software; they’re a fundamental and critical part of the community, submitting patches and developing new features themselves,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “Before this event, however, there was no neutral forum that would advance and optimize this collaboration. The End User Summit will fill this gap and accelerate problem solving for Linux.”

The Linux Foundation fosters innovation by hosting events for the Linux technical community, application developers, industry and end users. These events help to solve pressing issues facing Linux and fuel collaboration and communication between all members of the Linux ecosystem: developers, users, industry, ISVs and distribution vendors. Other Linux Foundation events include a mix of industry and community conferences such as its annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summits, Kernel Summit, the Linux Plumbers Conference and the Linux Foundation Legal Summits.

More information on this and other events can be found at here.

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