| By Kevin Bedell |
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| August 7, 2003 12:00 AM EDT |
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14,642 |
I'm writing from a pod of Compaq computers on the show floor all running Red Hat. The pod is sponsored by HP and provides everyone with net access. Thanks!
I can't tell you how exciting this show has been. I haven't been to a show in a long time that's had this kind of buzz.
We've had some interesting announcements from Red Hat this week -- they announced here at the show a "Open Source Now Fund." The purpose of the fund is to, in their words, "cover legal expenses associated with infringement claims brought against companies developing software under the GPL license and non-profit organizations".
In case you're interested, you can find out more at the Red Hat site.
The launch of LinuxWorld Magazine has really been big news as well. Over 4,000 copies of the Premier Issue were originally available on this show floor, to mid- and high-level managers wanting to subscribe so they get the magazine for the next year to help them make better, more informed decisions about whether, when, and how to migrate to Linux in their business. We thought we had plenty to last all three days, but at the end of day two they were all gone!
We've already gotten some great reviews on the content as well. At least one person told me that they loved the Eric Raymond interview -- and we've already gotten e-mails from subscribers telling how much they liked the issue. Hats off to the whole team behind this new mag! They've all worked really hard and done a great job!
You need to also check out some of the interviews we've done. There are a bunch of great ones. Some of the highlights are the interviews with
- Bruce Perens on his new open Source book series and his thoughts on some major challenges facing the open source community.
- Paul Cormier, EVP Engineering of Red Hat, Inc.
- John Fowler, CTO of Software for Sun Microsystems talking about the future of Java and Linux.
- Michael Robertson, CEO of Lindows.com, Inc. talking about the Future of Linux on the Desktop.
- Richard French, General Manager of OSDN (owners of Slashdot, Freshmeat, Sourceforge and Newsforge) talking about the history and future of Slashdot and Sourceforge.
And the list goes on and on...
But the biggest story here is Linux itself. The growth and the breadth of applications I'm seeing are amazing. It's also been incredible how many companies are contributing to Linux development. Scott Handy, Director, Linux Solutions, IBM Software Group told me that IBM now has 300 people dedicated to Linux and open source development. Sun has a bunch of people as well. So does Veritas, Computer Associates, and virtually everyone else here. Regardless of the SCO and other challenges facing Linux, I'm convinced that now Linux is becoming truly unstoppable!
And we'll be here at LinuxWorld.com and LinuxWorld Magazine to chronicle the adventure.
What a long strange trip it'll be! Thanks for reading!
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