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Our Blogs Open Sauce linux.conf.au: Bid to bring distros together
Our Blogs Open Sauce linux.conf.au: Bid to bring distros together | linux.conf.au: Bid to bring distros together |
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| by Sam Varghese | |
| Friday, 09 November 2007 | |
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Page 2 of 2 For Linux Australia, this is the main activity undertaken each year; it provides the seed capital for the organisers to start planning and getting things underway. As sponsorship funds comes in - and Oxer notes that there has never been a problem in finding sponsors to carry the conference - these are provided to the organising committee. The Australian conference has retained its technical focus unlike the conference held in the US which has basically become a tradeshow. The third conference, held in Ottawa each year, tends to focus on the Linux kernel. Oxer feels that the technical focus should remain; hence sponsors who want to get involved in the Australian conference on the understanding that they can ask for a keynote of their choice are unlikely to gain a foothold. The same goes for any sponsor who may seek access to the registrant database as one of the terms for getting involved. Every one of the sponsors for next year's conference is happy for the technical nature of the gathering to remain unchanged. At times, sponsorships have aroused comment. Apple was a sponsor in 2003 and some people felt that this was to some extent out of order. Novell's sponsorship last year was also questioned by some as it came just a couple of months after the company had signed its infamous deal with Microsoft. One deal that fell by the way a couple of years ago was the delegate programme which Sun Microsystems had sponsored. Sun itself got involved in the open source business and found Linux to be a competitor; hence, says Oxer, it felt that the sponsorship did not help it in any way. This incident, in part, led some within the Australian FOSS community to question whether Linux Australia itself should undergo a name change that would make it appear to be more representative of all free and open source software. Those who were proponents of this argument held that the term Linux merely referred to the kernel and that the subject matter of the annual conference went well beyond that. Of course, for anyone on the outer, Linux means the entire operating system and to give up such branding seems incredibly stupid. Oxer does not use such terminology but agrees that a change of name wouldn't be of much benefit. Thankfully, those who subscribe to his point of view are in the majority.
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