Wrap-up On The Ottawa Linux Symposium

Joe Barr writes "David Graham wraps up his coverage of the Ottawa Linux Symposium with this report on Day 4, including the closing keynote address by Andrew Morton. If you've been turned off by the commercialism of LWCE the past couple of years, you might find the OLS to be breath of fresh air. Our fearless reporter has provided detailed, behind-the-headlines coverage each day of the event."

Comments

Ottawa Linux Symposium

[static0verdrive]

It's too bad the symposium is so expensive; they have often had very interesting people and interesting seminars.

The funny part is half the people who do go are your average slashdot reader-types from outside Canada, so when the daily drinking begins, it only takes two hours for their frail geek-bodies to become overboard drunk! Luckily our Ottawa LUG practices year-round with a meet at the bar after each LUG meeting...

First job on the agenda?

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

Immediately upgrade all pc's at DeGrassi to Linux. Result? J.T. reaches new heights of nerd-dom, Emma now gets to argue with Snake over which distro to use, and Marco will become more alternative than ever. However, Paige remains bitchy and sticks to Windows out of spite.

LSB

[Zorilla]

Linux Standard Base is something mentioned in the speech, and it does seem to be something that could help remedy the current spaghetti that is the file structure. With the ever-changing library names, the symlinks start to pile up.

Probably not as related, but have you ever taken a look at the /dev directory? Each distro seems to have their own way of organizing devices. Of course, instead of making things neater, you end up with the new way of organizing it plus symlinks to all the old ones as well.

Browsing files seems to be what makes Linux difficult for me. Cleaning things up ought to make things much easier (even compared to Windows)

I was disappointed

[Ron Harwood]

The symposium just wasn't as good as last year.

The schedule came out late - by the time I received it, I'd already booked my travel arrangements - and ended up missing the keynote and some sessions that I would have liked to go to.

The only sponsored session was snacks/drinks... and listening to an author talk about his (non-technical) books for what seemed like an eternity.

The wireless network - while steady and up this year - had a crap-ass interenet connection that was less stable than a fainting goat.

All in all - the conference seemed haphazardly organized and last minute.

GPL violations discussion at OLS

[manavendra]

This report has some coverage of the discussions for fighting GPL violations.

Interesting case in point made by Herald Welte that "If a company violates the GPL and negotiates with the FSF to stop, by the time they agree to stop the product is done and they're gone on to the next one -- which could also violate the GPL. Then they can go through the whole process again without really losing much. ".

What I'd like to know is, if there are any steps to identify GPL violations? There are companies all over the world using and modifying OSS tools (most notably from the Apache foundation) and selling them (or selling them as part of their product suites). Is there any initiative to counter this?