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Press Release: June 25, 1998

OPEN SOURCE DEVELOPER DAY PROVIDES NUTS AND BOLTS OF FREELY-DISTRIBUTED SOFTWARE Essential Development Concepts, Successful Business Models Highlighted

Sebastopol, CA--The momentum of open source software has been building since March, when Netscape announced its freely-available Communicator source code; April, when O'Reilly & Associates sponsored the widely-reported Open Source Summit; and this week, with IBM's announcement that it is adopting Apache's free server for its e-commerce Web server. Continuing that momentum, O'Reilly is sponsoring the first Open Source Developer Day on August 21 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, California, immediately following O'Reilly's Perl Conference 2.0. Complete information and online registration is at opensource.oreilly.com. Admission to Open Source Developer Day is $195 through July 15, and for attendees of Perl Conference 2.0; after July 15, general admission is $295.

Open Source Developer Day is designed to provide practical information about how open source software works in the real world. The event focuses on how successful open source software communities have developed, and the business models and licenses which people have created to support them.

Topics to be discussed include:

  • Open Source: Essential Concepts and Models: an explanation of the theory and practice of creating successful open source software;

  • Open Source Project Management and Logistics: how to get a large, disparate group of volunteer developers to work in tandem, coordinating version control, security and bug fixes;

  • Open Source Business Models: presenters will discuss ways they've found to create profitable businesses while still supporting open source communities, including selling enhanced software, services, and books;

  • Licensing and Legal Issues: discussion of the thorny questions and creative solutions critical to the further development of open source software.

Key members of such open source communities as Apache, Linux, Perl and mozilla.org will be participants on panels, including:

  • Tim O'Reilly, President/CEO, O'Reilly & Associates, publisher of books on open source software, Unix, the Internet;
  • Larry Wall, creator of Perl, widely used by system administrators and on nearly all active Web sites; Senior Developer, O'Reilly & Associates;
  • Jim Hamerley, Vice President, Client Products Division, Netscape Communications Corp., whose mozilla.org freely distributes source code for Netscape Communicator;
  • Bob Young, President, Red Hat Software, a software development company that sells products and provides services related to Linux, a freely available Unix-like operating system;
  • Brian Behlendorf, a founder of the Apache group, which created and maintains the world's most popular Web server;
  • John Ousterhout, CEO, Scriptics Corp. and creator of the popular Tcl scripting language;
  • Pamela Samuelson, Professor at the University of California at Berkeley with a joint appointment in the School of Information Management and Systems and the School of Law; co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology;
  • Eric Raymond, independent developer active in the Linux community; author of the influential paper, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar."

About O’Reilly

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