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Extending And Embracing In Portland At OSCON 2003 116

Posted by timothy from the we-join-this-program-already-in-progress dept.
Officially, the theme of this year's Open Source Software Convention (OSCON) 2003 is "Embracing and Extending Proprietary Software," and to that end approximately 1,500 attendees (and companies including Apple, Active State, online book-seller Powells.com and MySQL) are sharing space in three floors of Portland's downtown Marriott, and will until the conference's close on Friday. (Representatives from Microsoft are along for the ride, too. Lunch on Wednesday is Microsoft's treat.) An unoffical theme of ubiquitious connectivity and creative collaborative in much in evidence as well: besides the conference-furnished wireless access points throughout the classroom area, numerous other base stations (like the one I'm connected to right now) have popped up. What do you expect with more than a thousand laptop-toting programmers in one hotel? There's also a "semi-unofficial" wiki (applauded by Tim O'Reilly), an ongoing web log of the conference, and an irc channel filled with conference attendees. Read on for more.

The goods:

Commercial vendor booths have been fork-lifted in and assembled throughout the course of the day in the lowest of three convention floors, but OSCON's company-sponsored exhibit booths are likely to be low-key and informative, not the glitzy schwag dispensaries of LinuxWorld Expo. (Added to which, the exhibits will only be up six hours on each of Wednesday and Thursday.)

Tutorials and other information-heavy sessions are the core of OSCON; attendees who have paid (or had their employers pay) more than a thousand dollars to attend a five days of tutorials and conference sessions are understandably serious about actually learning things.

I stopped in on one such serious session this morning, "A Day of Extreme Programming" taught by the Irish team of Marty Pauley, Tony Bowden, Marc Kerr and Karen Pauley. The instructors skipped over justifying the methodology of Extreme Programming, and instead immediately launched into a short, funny demonstration of multi-programmer iterative debugging before splitting the 30-or-so attendees into three programming teams for the rest of the day, each team coordinating its efforts using provided CVS servers to work for a simulated client (Karen Pauley, a manager in real life) with a nethack-style game to improve.

Marty Pauley drew some laughs by pointing out the "high-tech project coordination system" he had purchased in anticipation of the all-day session, which he said had cost about $14 in for the whole group. At this, he pulled out several packs of index cards, a plastic case to house them, and some rings to bind smaller collections of cards. "Forget about Gantt charts, every aspect of the project goes on an index card."

Cheap, not necessarily dirty.

Pauley's Index-cards and CVS make a decent capsule of the whole conference: there's a definite leaning toward the practical, get-things-done-cheap aspect of open software rather than appeals to the importance of sharing emphasized by Richard Stallman's Free Software movement. OSCON features dozens of sessions and tutorials emphasizing the efficiency, standards compliance, and low-cost of source-available software, with just a few sessions touching on underlying philosophy or licensing. In one session yesterday, for instance, Free Software Foundation executive director Bradley Kuhn talked about the GNU General Public License as it applies to managers as well as to coders.

This doesn't mean that attendees aren't interested in philosophical underpinnings or changing the world -- more likely it's simply that in summer 2003, most programmers who would show up at an event like this have already wrestled with and come up with their own conclusions about software openness, including what licenses or license types they're comfortable using.

One indicator of the Open-vs-Free pragmatism at OSCON is the prevalence of Apple laptops running Mac OS X; Apple's OS may be the best poster child right now for the pleasing results possible in a mix of open source with proprietary software. One tutorial room I looked in on 22 attendees using Intel laptops, most of which were running graphical desktops on Linux or BSD, and 6 with PowerBooks running OS X. I note a similarly high proportion of OS X machines being used around the conference floor when hundreds of attendees swarm out of conference rooms at each break between sessions.

Changing the world, one press release at a time.

A handful of interesting announcements have come out during the convention so far. Among them: MySQl and PogoLinux have announced a joint project, a turnkey database appliance running MySQL on an Intel based box. ActiveState (makers of well-regarded IDEs for Python and Perl, among other things) will show an alpha release of Komodo 2.5, the latest iteration of their IDE for programming in Perl, Python, PHP, Tcl and XSLT. Many more such announcements are likely after the exhibit hall opens tomorrow morning.

Not everything at OSCON is about helping businesses produce more virtual widgets per square inch, though -- the sense of collaboration isn't limited to downtown Portland. Ethan Zuckerman, founder of Tripod, and now founder of Geekcorps, will talk Friday on Geekcorps' efforts to bring digital independence to poor countries; he and several other geek activists took part today in a by-invitation roundtable discussion about spreading good through technology, and will be speaking together in a press conference tomorrow on the various ways computers and other high-tech tools can be used to promote prosperity worldwide.

Viva la revolucion!

At a conference about extending and embracing proprietary software, the SCO-initiated legal fight over UNIX copyrights is surely on the minds of many attendees, but readers who have grown tired of the ongoing drama will be pleased that there's been little buzz here among attendees about SCO's legal actions. Is it because SCO's suit against IBM is simply irrelevant, or because most people are withholding judgment until SCO actually points out the code the company objects to? SCO is not forgotten, though: tomorrow afternoon, Bradley Kuhn, Chris DiBona, Alan Nugent and Lawrence Rosen will discuss the SCO case in a session called The IP Wars, which ought to get some blood pumping.

In the meantime, conference attendees will get to see something more fun and less contentious this evening: status reports on six different open source software projects: Perl (explained by Larry Wall), Python (Guido van Rossum), PHP (Shane Caraveo), MySQL (Monty Widenius and David Axmark), Apache (Greg Stein), and Linux (Theodore Ts'o).
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Extending And Embracing In Portland At OSCON 2003 More

Extending And Embracing In Portland At OSCON 2003

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  • What do you expect? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08, 2003 @06:04PM (#6396282)
    What do you expect with more than a thousand laptop-toting programmers in one hotel?

    Body odor?

  • Like what SCO alleges was done to their code?

    Nice to hear the OSS folks owning up to what their real agenda is.

  • Lunch on M$? (Score:5, Funny)

    by nepheles ( 642829 ) on Tuesday July 08, 2003 @06:13PM (#6396342) Homepage
    Lunch paid for by Microsoft? We could perform an en-masse, real-life slashdot on them!
    • If their food is as bad as their software, we'd slashdot the bathrooms next. I think I'll pass.
    • Microsoft are actually very generous people. I've had a couple of free bars at my university courtesy of MS. We managed do drink about £900 each time, between 20-40 of us. Drinks in the student bar are about £1 each.
    • Watch out for the gaggle [wordreference.com] of hungry nerds! I couldn't imagine what else could be as scary.

    • How about a boycott instead? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Tuesday July 08, 2003 @06:41PM (#6396493)
      Lunch paid for by Microsoft? We could perform an en-masse, real-life slashdot on them!

      How about an en-masse, real-life, guaranteed-to-be-more-effective, boycott? RSVP(if necessary), but don't show up. Spread the word, and make it clear it's in protest of MS's ties to SCO(they're practically pulling the strings at SCO, right?). DO NOT turn it into a "MS sucks" boycott- the press will (rightly) see that as childish, and the industry will see it as the Linux community not "playing nice with others". If it has a clear purpose and reason, it'll be another matter entirely, so make sure people understand what it's all about- Microsoft's support of SCO and SCO's actions. Wouldn't hurt to include any other companies involved even slightly with SCO, if there are any in attendance.

      You won't hurt the caterers or the facility(if it's one thing caterers are good at, it's covering their own asses; up-front payment, contracts, etc). Probably the only downside is that a lot of food might go to waste, although one would hope the food would get donated(a few heads-up calls to local shelters and food pantries along the lines of "there will be considerable amounts of food available on..." might help)

      • Alternatively (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You could grow up, get a job, and figure out that Microsoft isn't even a blip on the radar screen of the world's troubles.

        But that would assume you had two synapses to rub together and it's clear that you're barely squeaking by with your one neuron.
      • Ooh, let's hope the press don't get the wrong idea, I am sure CNN and TIME will be carefully watching as this story develops, this is such an important and earth-shattering idea! You'll go down in history with Gandhi.
      • Staff at a small computer conference yesterday were expressing "shock and dismay" at the poor performance of Wednesday's lunch.

        Local area Dinnerlady, Mavis Angolis, 58, exclaimed, "I don't understand it. It was full Monday and Tuesday but today its less than full". Rumors have been flying about the site about the possible explanation for the failure to fill every seat in the small canteen. Some cite a internet post on popular IT News site, slashdot, as the cause. However, others have their own theory
      • How about we all buy some tinfoil hats?

        Microsoft isn't evil, it is just a corporation. If you can't deal with that maybe you should movie to Russia, you damn hippie -- wait, nevermind, they are capitalist too now. Ok, maybe you should KILL YOURSELF.

        • You sound like a Bush-apologist.
          Simply referring to tin foil hats does not make you point; instead it points out your extreme right-wing bias.
          Companies do not have the same rights as individuals, and telling people who assert their rights over companies to 'move to Russia, you damn hippie' will not further your narrow-minded argument.
          In the real world, the wishes of corporations should be balanced with the rights of individuals. If you don't like it, move the the Whitehouse so we can take you all out in one

          • Companied do have the same rights as individuals, for companies are nothing more than a collection of individuals.

            Attempting to deny human rights to people just because they work for, or run, a company is still denying human rights. Trying to pretend that companies are some sort of other entity not made up of humans (with human rights) is just the socia, er, liberal attempt to justify opposition to human rights.

            Thus there is no "balance" that needs to be reached between the "Wishes of [individuals]" and
            • Wrong.

              Companies are not collections of people. They are collections of capital. They act without conscience. They behave in a distinctly anti-social manner.

              I am not trying to force people to act the way I 'approve'. I am trying to force companies, which are collections of money, to act with conscience in situations in which they would otherise not - ie most situations.

              And the bit about endorsing slavery. WTF? I would think that your position would be closer to endorsing slavery than mine.

              I assert again:

              • That's funny, I have a big pile of capital in my wallet and it hasnt' chosen to incorporate!

                You complain about companies being "anti-social"... how can capital be anti-social ? Its not human, it can't have social interaction.... only humans can be anti-social.

                Furthermore, how can a company-- which by definition is a collection of people who are working together-- be anti social? After all the purpose of a company is to employ people and to make products or offer services that people want.

                IF the company
      • So your asking computer nerds to pass up a free meal? Let's start with something small like world peace.
      • Agreed. Several sayings come to mind:

        There's no such thing as a Free lunch.
        Beware of Geeks bearing gifts.

        And on a lighter note, I wish I was there. It sounds like fun.
      • OK, it is a bit of an ethical dilemma, I must admit. But I'm leaning toward taking the free lunch tomorrow.

        Why? Well for one thing, if we do as you suggest and boycott, then Microsoft will just have the lunches distributed to the homeless up and down the street near the Hotel and so they'll get credit for feeding the homeless and it'll be on the local news tomorrow night: "Microsoft comes to Portland to feed the homeless! Isn't Bill Gates wonderful? Film at 11."

        Also, I think I can take the free lunch an

    • TANSTAAFL, Dude... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ewhac ( 5844 )

      There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

      ...Especially when Microsoft's offering it.

      Schwab

    • Beware if it's kool-aid. :-D

      (Introducing BPOD - The Blue Punch of Death.)

  • no thanks (Score:5, Funny)

    by outsider007 ( 115534 ) on Tuesday July 08, 2003 @06:17PM (#6396361)
    the last I extended and embraced anything I ended up with the clap

  • SCO vs. IBM reference within the article. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RALE007 ( 445837 ) on Tuesday July 08, 2003 @06:17PM (#6396363)
    ...the SCO-initiated legal fight over UNIX copyrights is surely on the minds of many attendees...

    I am sick of that groundless case causing fear within the community. Anyone with lingering doubts please see the OSI Position Paper on The SCO-vs-IBM Complaint [opensource.org]

    I'd love it if that stupid fiasco didn't have to spill over into anything that has to do with OSS.

  • Lunch (Score:5, Funny)

    by lnoble ( 471291 ) on Tuesday July 08, 2003 @06:17PM (#6396364)
    To all attending, DO NOT eat the free Microsoft lunch. What better way to deal a blow to OSS then poisoning a large population of the community.

    • Re:Lunch (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      They didn't intend to. They just left too many bugs in the food
    • DO NOT EAT THE PUDDING. REPEAT, DO NOT EAT THE PUDDING.

      Additional text added to defeat the lameness filter which is obviously not up on its classic internet humor.

  • Lunch EULA (Score:5, Funny)

    by Phil John ( 576633 ) <phil@@@webstarsltd...com> on Tuesday July 08, 2003 @06:17PM (#6396366)
    Section 4, paragraph 6:

    Lunch is on us, however, you may not publish in any form anything that could ever possibly be constued to be a review, without our express written consent, or you'll get no desert!

    • Re:Lunch EULA (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I don't want a desert.
    • or you'll get no desert!

      I know Microsoft is rich, but did they really plan to be giving out real estate?

    • Lunch is on us, however, you may not publish in any form anything that could ever possibly be constued to be a review, without our express written consent, or you'll get no desert!

      That's no big loss. I live in New Mexico, and seeing as it's 93F as I write this at night, I'll tell you that getting "no desert" is not such a bad thing. :)

  • Uh oh (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tevenson ( 625386 ) <(tevenson) (at) (gmail.com)> on Tuesday July 08, 2003 @06:19PM (#6396378) Homepage
    It sounds to me like Microsoft is going to try and sell the idea of their CLI through their semi-open source Rotor. Has anyone seen what this actually is? I haven't heard a thing about since the day I attended the .NET launch in Seattle.

    If I were M$ I would be very afraid to let people see my code; as it were its never been really impressived when small snippets get released.

    • Re:Uh oh (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08, 2003 @06:29PM (#6396426)
      Peter Drayton, a program manager in Microsoft's Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) team, is also heading to the conference. Microsoft has offered a shared-source version of CLI, which is also known by the code name "Rotor."

      CLI is a set of specs that describe the components at the heart of Microsoft's .Net Framework. It encompasses an execution engine, the platform portability layer and the class libraries as well as compilers, various tests and utility programs.

      Drayton is going to talk at Oscon about what Rotor is, why Microsoft did it and what people have been doing with it. While it is aimed at the academic and research sectors, "there is a fairly high overlap between people interested in research and people interested in open source," Drayton said.

      "So, part of Rotor's core audience has an intersection or overlap with the kind of people who attend Oscon. With Rotor we were really going after the people doing virtual machine and programming language research," he said.

      Current projects using Rotor range from technology research to teaching people how to work on distributed systems, Drayton said.

      Looks like the folks who ponied up their $1000 get to see what it is. Maybe they'll share with the class.

    • Re:Uh oh (Score:2, Informative)

      by colenski ( 552404 )
      Look here. [microsoft.com]

    • Re:Uh oh (Score:3, Interesting)

      by rifftide ( 679288 )
      O'Reilly has a book on Rotor written by David Stutz, its former architect. Stutz resigned from Microsoft several months ago and published an open letter to his former bosses about the challenge MS faces from OSS: http://www.synthesist.net/writing/onleavingms.html
  • Portland? Which one? Are there any real journalists in the house?

    • The one in my great home state: Oregon - The Silicon Forest :)
    • Portland? Which one? Are there any real journalists in the house?

      Journalists in or near Maine, you mean? I don't think anyone else is wondering. It's Portland, Oregon.
      • Well, considering Portland, OR is only near a port, one has to wonder where it even got its name. Hmmm... could it be that it was named after Portland, Maine? Or is it even more interresting than that, [documentary.com]? A different result of the coin toss would have had us asking which Boston.

        Let's recap: Portland, Maine was around way longer, is actually a Port town, and the "other" Portland was named after it as the result of a coin toss. And as far as population goes, I would guess (although I may be wrong) that more p
        • I'm not disagreeing with that, just saying nobody outside the Maine area really cares much about the other Portland.

          When you select your time zone on the Mac OS, it asks you to choose a city in your time zone. One of the options in "Portland, USA". I bet that pisses off people in Maine.
  • Anyone attending should keep in mind also that Portland is one of the most un-wired cities. Check out Personal Telco [personaltelco.net] for access points around town. Including several bars. I highly recommend the Rose and Raindrop on the east side of the willamette river on grand ave.

    J
    • By un-wired... do you mean it has a lot of wireless access? I'm so confused!

      Many coffee shops here in Portland, Oregon do have internet access, and you pretty much can't throw a rock without hitting either a coffee shop or a microbrew pub here.

  • MS Lunch should be GPL (Score:3, Funny)

    by Eberlin ( 570874 ) on Tuesday July 08, 2003 @06:34PM (#6396457) Homepage
    After all the "don't eat the MS Lunch" posts, I want to add my own personal twist to it. If they GPL the lunch, then any derrivative work done from the lunch should be given back to the community.

    In short, this is an example of Microsoft using the Open Source community for testing its iLoo
  • Am I the only one who thinks it is rude and inappropriate for Microsoft to attend when they have no interest in supporting Linux, and in fact their reason for attending is to push their own products that have absolutely nothing to do with Linux?

    I went to a Linux show recently where MS was attending, and there was a rather negative atmosphere surrounding the MS booth. They really had no interest in anything but telling anyone who would listen that their products were better.

    I don't understand, what are

    • Re:rude (Score:2, Insightful)

      by RALE007 ( 445837 )
      It's not a linux convention, it is an open source convention. Open source != Linux.
    • An Open Source/Linux website devoting 2-3 stories a day to bashing Microsoft...
      • Umm... I don't think any F/OSS companies show up at Windows conventions(is there such a thing) with a beliggerant attitude.

        Furthermore, sometimes the shoe fits...

    • Re:rude (Score:3, Interesting)

      by eht ( 8912 )
      They may be trying to sell the award winning Microsoft Services for Unix 3 [microsoft.com], that's right, Microsoft won a LinuxWorld award.

      most text reused from my earlier post [slashdot.org]
    • I'm English, so apologies if the phrae above doesn't mean quite what I think it would if it was in a business newspaper.

      Open Source movers do need to persuade the large numbers of people who believe themselves to be dependent on the model Microsoft are most associated with advancing for a living, that they are actually not so dependent.

      This includes those within Microsoft.

      Even though the Microsofties who are sent to such a meeting may not be the most likely to undergo a change of mind, it is an opportuni

  • Details? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Valar ( 167606 ) on Tuesday July 08, 2003 @06:42PM (#6396496)
    What's the EULA for this lunch? I mean, are the derivative works property of microsoft? If so, is there an "enterprise" option allowing one to opt out of such license clauses?
  • If it's the same thing they're serving in my building's cafeteria tomorrow, here's a hint: I'm going to Azteca, and I suggest you do the same.
  • That's like Microsoft advertising on Slashdot!

    oh wait...
  • Spaghetti, coded in honey based sauce with lots of button mushrooms to push.

  • I can confirm that the Wi-Fi problems have been fixed. Yesterday I could barely surf for pr0n in the bar on the Restaurant level. Goatse would take at least 1 minute to load, fer Chrissakes.

    Today I can offend in seconds. Hats off to the Oreilly techs for their quick work.

    If I down one more pint, I'll be educating the masses with the help of the autopr0n guy...

  • Everyone computer scientist knows about the No Free Lunch Theorem [uq.edu.au], so be leery!
  • .. as free lunch! Wait and see. If you think we are going to get some peace while we eat, you think wrong. They will show us the BSOD and a dancing monkey, I promise. Well, check out My site with pictures [phrenetic.to] Caution swedish! Well, pretty decent event after all. Cheerz!
  • Two times I have been forced to pay for versions of Windows that I did not want. Tomorrow, Ill eat all I can at their "sponsored lunch" to get some of my damn money back!!!
  • oSCOn, 'nuff said...
  • Hey, I don't mind if Microsoft wastes it's money on me for lunch. It's not going to change my mind or my position on Microsoft.

    It's kind of like getting drinks from gay guys at bars, let them buy you drinks all night, but at the end of the day, you ain't going home with them. :-)

    sri

  • What he's really after is a list of all developers that could potentially create the next killer app. So be warned if they ask to see your ID. Kind of strange that Microsoft would choose to represent itself on TV with a giant BUG! It takes all kinds of people to make a profit in an economic downturn.

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