Open Source Initiative

If you are visiting OSCON this week, come to the OSI's annual public face-to-face meeting Thursday July 24th at Room F152 during the lunch break.

Here is the draft agenda:

This week I'm attending OSCON 2008, where the OSI is celebrating its 10th anniversary as an organization, but that's only one reason I'm here.

In one week the open source community will meet at OSCON. I'll be part of a panel - Open Source, Open World - that will discuss the success and challenges for open source worldwide. Danese Cooper, that is hosting the panel, asked the participants to list a few questions that we should discuss on the panel.

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. And it will be participating at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) in Portland this July 23-25, 2008. Meet OSI's team and listen to what OSI speakers have to say at the following OSCON sessions.

See you there!

In a free market, over time, competition in the production of a commodity product will eliminate all profits. Bread-makers can sell their bread for enough money to cover the cost of the capital invested in the bakery, the cost of the flour, yeast, sugar, and water, the fuel needed for firing, and the salary of the baker. They can earn no more money than that. If they did, then another bakery would be established which would price its products lower, splitting that profit between the customer and the owner of the new bakery.

Last week I read the book small is possible. It's a great read, and I heartily recommend it to anyone who enjoyed books like The Tipping Point, The Wisdom of Crowds, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and other books that powerfully explain the world from a new perspective.

I was happy to learn on Monday that the Petaflop barrier has been broken. IBM's Roadrunner supercomputer achieved this feat with commodity hardware and open source software (including Red Hat's Enterprise Linux).

I just read the story of Helmer, a Fedora 8 linux cluster in an IKEA Helmer cabinet. The story begins

3D computer rendering are very CPU intensive and the best way so speed up slow render problems, are usually to distribute them on to more computers. Render farms are usually very large, expensive and run using ALLOT of energy. I wanted to build something that could be put in my home, not make too much noise and run using very little energy... and be dirt cheep, big problem? :) no computer stuff cost almost nothing these days, it just a matter of finding fun stuff to play with.