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General admission at FreeBSD Con

softweyr writes "Pat Rietz at Walnut Creek CD-ROM has confirmed that there will be general admission (ie, free) at the FreeBSD Conference for the vendors booths." This is good to have confirmed, as some posters to an earlier story mentioned the cost as a definite disincentive to turning up. I'm looking forward to being able to put faces to very many names next week.

14 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. A capability is not a facility by Morgaine · · Score: 2

    So, what you're saying is that there is no mechanism actually available for subsystem stop/start control in *BSD.

    Well, one can live with that for now, but it's clearly something that needs addressing.

    --
    "The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
  2. Wish I could be there as well by dennisp · · Score: 2

    Unfortunately I don't have that kind of money to dole out for flight to and back as well as conference costs.

    Some of the programs look really interesting.

    Barry Caplin, USWest
    "Running an ISP on FreeBSD"

    Fred Sanchez, Apple
    "FreeBSD and the Darwin Project"

    Jeff Chase, Duke University
    "Gigabit networks with FreeBSD"

    ARGH !

    ----------

  3. Re:Now if only I could get out there. by georgeha · · Score: 2

    Here's a second for the East Coast, maybe even within a few hours of Rochester, NY.

    I'm even wearing my daemon T-shirt today.

    George

  4. Just remember... by rde · · Score: 3

    Free admission, not free beer.

  5. Putting on Conferences is Expensive by Tom+Christiansen · · Score: 2
    Shouldn't all open source conferences be free?
    Why yes. Everything be free. Nobody should pay for anything, even if that thing is inherently costly.

    You just don't understand. These conferences cost hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) to produce, and come with severe liabilities.

    Please go to a suitable hotel and scout this out on your own. Tell them you'd like a conference with about a thousand people. (Or even a few hundred.) Figure out how much it will cost to rent the meeting space. Then tell them you need a big area most of the time, but for BOFs/tutorials/working-groups, you'll need several smaller areas as well. And don't forget their supply you with coffee in the morning and pop in the afternoon. We're not even talking about a lunch or an evening reception.

    Seriously, putting on meetings takes REAL MONEY. You are not going to get some philanthropist to waste a half million bucks just so people don't have to pay their own way.

  6. Re:FreeBSD community website? by georgeha · · Score: 4

    A few other good sites, are Daemon news, for all sorts of info on the *BSDs, and FreeBSD Rocks for FreeBSD information, and FreeBSD Zine for more information, and finally, to buy your own cuddly daemon, FreeBSD Mall. George

  7. Re:Open Source by nevets · · Score: 2

    If you feel so strongly about this, go ahead and organize and fund an Open Source event. Make it free to all attendees. I'll go!

    (Not so easy to do this is it!)
    Steven Rostedt

    --
    Steven Rostedt
    -- Nevermind
  8. And who would pay for it? by A+nonymous+Coward · · Score: 2

    It's all well and good to want to be a cheapskate, but someone has to pay for it. Regardless of whether price == 0, cost != 0. Who do you nominate? Name names!

    --

  9. Re:FreeBSD community website? by bsletten · · Score: 2

    > Or is there a mailinglist with a web interface/archive?
    You can search the 20+ mailing lists at:

    http://www.freebsd.org/search/search.html

    Or, if you have sufficient amounts of freetime, just browse the archives at:

    http://docs.freebsd.org/mail/

  10. Wouldn't it be nice... by Brew+Bird · · Score: 2

    Wouldn't it be nice if this was simulacast from a streaming video system? (ala NANOG)


    Then you wouldn't HAVE to travel all the way to the left coast!

  11. Free speech, not free admission by Croaker · · Score: 2

    This appears to be just free admission to the vendor booths, like the vast majority of conventions/industry shows I've seen (i.e. Seybold).

    What makes free software possible is that software can be made freely available due to its nature. Having a convention, in a convention hall, with all of the costs that entails, would for the most part preclude having a free convention. I expect here that the exhibitors are picking up the tab, which is how it works usually with other big conventions. They realize they shouldn't charge to you walk around and be able to buy their products.

    Now, of course, you could hold a really free convention if you could find someplace to hold it for free. Maybe a field someplace. And vendors and attendees could set up tents... and people could share food... BSDStock!

    Unless you are local to the convention site, I suspect the free admission is not going to pack people in. There is still cost associated with getting to the convention. I doubt $10-$15 is going to make much of a difference either way. And if there is just free admission to the vendor area, it's not all that big a deal anyhow. The panels would be the things that would draw most people from further away.

  12. Re:FreeBSD community website? by drwiii · · Score: 2
    There's OS Online's BSD section, which covers all of the BSDs.

    --

  13. Re:Good relations between *BSD and Linux at confs by nikc · · Score: 2

    Morgaine wrote:

    [I'm still trying to live within the limitations of not having an init.d directory in FreeBSD to allow easy stop/start of subsystems without rebooting ... yeow, it seems mighty regressive not to have it!]

    /usr/local/etc/rc.d. Also, see the archives for the -arch mailing list, where this is discussed.

    N

  14. Re:Good relations between *BSD and Linux at confs by Morgaine · · Score: 2

    And it was great to see Alan Cox there too at the Corel stand in Olimpia and chat with him about the "good ol' days" and common acquaintances back at Swansea University (he started his hacking while at a place in the business park attached to the Uni).

    What absolutely astounded me though was discovering a Debian stand at the Expo! It's great to see what has been so far the least commercial of the distros be able to display its wares at such a well-regarded exhibition site. Well done guys, and I love the Debian t-shirt I brought back with me too! :-)

    --
    "The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra