LinuxWorld snubbed by Microsoft locked state governments

Stan Beer
Thursday, 23 March 2006 17:43

IT Industry - Market

The first-up keynote speaker, Jon “maddog” Hall, will lead off the conference on the first day with a paper and presentation, titled “You Can Bet Your Business on Free Software”. A well-known figure in the open source & Linux community, Hall proffers the advice that “Free Software gives much more value to the solution and therefore a better return on the investment than typically comes with closed source software.” he is also an outspoken Microsoft critic.

The conference will also feature tutorials by major Linux supporters in the vendor community. Topics include advanced Samba administration; deploying and developing OPAL (Oracle PHP Apache Linux); a workshop on the security features of Linux ; and a session – Xen and other Visualisation Techniques - on existing and emerging visualisation technologies.

Special hands-on labs will look at different aspects of Open Source including how to monitor and manage network resources and machines with popular Open Source tools; how to design and implement an Open Source centralised authentication solution that is suitable for a multi-site, cross-platform organisation; Linux High Availability Clustering; and, Open LDAP Fundamentals, a session for looking at the concepts of LDAP components and Directory Information Tree design.

Developments in the use of open source by governments worldwide, and where they see future opportunities in open source, will be discussed by Sunil Abraham of the international Open Source Network, a United Nations initiative.

Delegates will be welcomed by the conference chairperson Pia Waugh, a vice-president of Linux Australia. Ms Waugh will also present a paper on "How to Create an Open Source Strategy for your Organisation" and discuss "where the business challenges and opportunities lie, and how to best leverage open source to gain control over your ICT strategy and business goals."