2006 the year of Linux in Australia?

Stan Beer
Friday, 14 October 2005 10:00

IT Industry - Development

As the Open Source debate rages worldwide, Australia is set to stage four major conferences covering Open Source for the first time in one year.

With governments and businesses increasingly shifting away from proprietary systems to Open Source, 2006 is tipped by some observers to be a watershed year for Linux and the Australian Open Source community. Four events, dedicated to Linux and Open Source, will be staged for the first time in one year in Australia and New Zealand.

The events will cover Open Source from all angles - two developer conferences, one home user event and a business/Government focused event.  

Next year kicks off in January with Australia's national Linux conference - linux.conf.au  -  a developer and technical conference that has been running for 7 years. The conference is being run offshore for the first time in Dunedin, New Zealand and is one of the top Linux technical conferences in the world, attracting world-class developers, including Mr Shorts and Sandals, Linux founder, Linus Torvalds.

The main Open Source event for business in 2006 will be LinuxWorld, which will be held in Sydney for three days from 28 March to 30 March, 2006. LinuxWorld, held in Australia for the first time, will feature a trade show as well as a conference with a variety of speakers from Australia and abroad. The organisers promise that the Sydney Linuxworld will be Australia's largest, dedicated Open Source event.

In May, CeBIT will be staged in Sydney.  CeBIT is an event covering the broader ICT marketplace and will look at Linux primarily from a consumer rather than business aspect.

Linux has been included in CeBIT for 2006 following an overwhelming response from attendees to have Linux covered in the conference.

Later next year, in December, the Open Source Developers Conference will be staged. The conference is an initiative of the Australian Perl Mongers group. Specifically developer focused, OSDC is relatively new but with a growing reputation as a local event staged especially for Open Source developers.

Meanwhile, many of Australia's event coordinators are increasingly exposed to the growing interest in Linux and Open Source by attendees. They have ensured the topics are included in conference schedules, providing their own insights to Open Source.

Prominence is often given to Open Source topics by the Australian Unix User Group, and this year's Asia-Pacific SEACC conference incorporated Australian Government presentations on Open Source.

With growing government interest in Open Source, the recent Smart Internet document endorsed by the Minister of ICT, Helen Coonan devoted a full page to the subject.