GoOpen 2008 day 2: Simon Phipps, Adrian Bowyer and Simon Josefsson

Day 2 of Go Open 2008 was as exiting as day 1, with great keynote speakers. In this article you will find small reviews of the keynotes I attended, every keynote was videotaped, so I will try to provide links to them later to complement my very short reviews.

Simon Phipps

Simon Phipps, the Chief Open Source Officer from Sun Microsystems started the day of with his keynote: "The adoption led market and its consequences, How Open Source Software Enters Businesses And Whats Next":

Sun owns several open source projects, NetBeans.org, OpenOffice.org, OpenSolaris, Project Glassfish, Java (duh!) and MySQL (recently acquired).

• We are not focused on one open source element, for example, we make and offer systems based on several open source applications, Simon Phipps.

Further on: - I am very fond of Ubuntu GNU/Linux, Ubuntu does it right, it doesn't put any barriers. Other GNU/Linux distributions have barriers, take Fedora for example, if you want to buy support, you've to downgrade to another distro. Ubuntu is widely adopted and sets the tone for the future open software.

Sun is involed in over 750 open source communities.

• Create a system, create the game that plays it, Simon Phipps.

Sun Microsystems is making big changes in their software policy, from a license based policy, to subscriptions. This mean that instead of licenses, Sun is offering support/updates/advice through subscriptions. Why? - Software licenses is an entirely artificial construct, Simon says.

Open source licensing is not ment to be threatening, its not ment to be a barrier between the producer of the software and the user of the software. Simon Phipps uses a quote from Eben Moglen: A license is the constitution for a community,

• Jump in, the future is ours to shape, Simon Phipps.

Adrian Bowyer

The next speaker was Adrian Bowyer, a professor from the University of Bath in the UK. He talked about RepRap, the open source self copying 3d printer. The basis of this, was that the RepRap replicator can make 3d parts and even replicate itself. Thats the goal, that it can fully replicated itself, but for now RepRap produces 35% of its own components.

From the start, Adrian wanted this project to be open and free for all. He couldn't sell this machine anyway, because the machine copies itself, you can only sell the machine one time. Adrian also mentions the Darwin evolution theory and incorporated it in the project:

• People will improve the design.
• Improvements will be posted back on the Internet.
• Old machines can make new designs.
• Breeding, speed, simplicity, accuracy and fewer added parts.

Simon Josefsson

The last keynote I attended at Go Open 2008 was about OpenID. Simon Josefsson, from Yubico.com presented what OpenID is and how it can ble implemented. He talked about the pros and cons about it.

What now?

All in all, Go Open was a very interesting event, and I strongly recommend it to anyone vagely interested in open source!