I've had people asking me what's up with OSCON this year--is anything interesting happening or can they skip it and watch "Alias" reruns instead. I can't make your decision for you (the relative attractiveness of the Alias lady and Damian Conway is something I'll leave to you to weigh) but I can definitely talk a little about what I'm jazzed about.
Things are getting very interesting in OSCON keynote space. Last week at etech, Mitch Kapor unveiled Chandler, the email/calendar/address application developed by his Open Source Application Foundation. So much that's interesting here for him to talk about: it's in Python, the idea of starting a non-profit to develop software, the balance between developing an application and developing a platform for third-party addons, .... And now there's actual code for you to try.
Sssh, don't tell anyone, but Tim's going to keynote at OSCON. It's not on the schedule yet, but it's going to happen. We were talking today and he came out with a formulation that tied together a whole bunch of technology things that we both find interesting. I guess I'll wait until he writes up a description rather than come out and say "he'll talk about ...", but I think he'll be trying to show a wider context for open source and identify some other things that open source hackers might be interested in within that context. I wish I'd been able to attend his etech session, but look for some of the people he spotlighted to make an appearance at OSCON ....
And then there's Miguel. I love Miguel. The first time I saw him was at a USENIX conference, and it was back-to-back KDE and GNOME sessions. The KDE guy was this staunch conservative German intent on seriously promoting the reliability, stability, and deployment-readiness of KDE. Then out bounded Miguel, speaking at 240 wpm and waving his hands, and he said "and we put this in and we put this in and we put this in because because because oh just because it's cool, yeah!" The poor KDE guy didn't stand a chance.
Of course, I hope Miguel doesn't speak at 240 wpm in his keynote. I'm watching Mono more closely than I'm watching, say, Python. I've done a little C# and .NET hacking (very little) and I like what I see. For some reason, I find C# less distasteful than Java. I can't say why, it just feels better, even with those ugly [square brackets]. I'm sure I'll get a dozen "I've used .NET and it SUCKS!" replies, but the very little I've done has been pleasant. I'm a bit boned on the Mac until they support OS X, though.
Stormy Peters works for HP in my own town, Fort Collins. She's talking directly to the theme of the conference, the way that open source and proprietary software often coexists rather than it being an all-or-nothing situation. Miguel's an interesting aspect of this, come to think of it, with his work bringing the best of Microsoft to open source. She works for a company that's making a big investment in Linux, and she'll be presenting the financial story behind why adopting open source is a good idea. These arguments have actually been pretty hard to find.
From the other side of the coin, we have Paul Buck (one of the eclipse.org bigwigs) to why IBM is participating in Eclipse. Eclipse is a big open source IDE, primarily for Java but with language-specific add-ons (including one for Perl). If you've ever tried to get your company to let you release something as a CPAN module, you'll know that it can be hard to convince a suit that it's smart to give back too.
I always like to make sure that we don't focus too hard on technology, so there are two somewhat more obliquely open source talks. The first is Milton Ngan, back to talk about the second Lord of the Rings movie and hopefully drop a few hints about the third (whose volume of special effects has, apparently, caused the release date to be moved). For my money, his talk last year was the best keynote ever. I went to visit him a month or so ago in Wellington, and got to see some of the work they were doing for the last movie (which, by the way, I can't wait for).
And, last but not least, George Dyson talking about von Neumann. This talk comes via Tim, who strongly recommended George to me. He's going to talk about the early days of computing with von Neumann's work at the Princeton Institute of Advanced Study. He knew everybody working in the glory days--he invited Turing to become his assistant, he worked with Church, he used Aiken's Harvard Mark I, he used ENIAC, he knew John Backus, etc. This bio page has lots of good information on him, and some great anecdotes.
Whew. What a lot of keynotes. Every year I try to cram more and more in, because it's so hard to say "no" when there's so much interesting activity in our world. And I'm sure it's going to be like this next year too. In fact, if you have suggestions for people you'd like to see at OSCON '04, drop me a line: gnat AT oreilly.com.
--Nat
A few years ago, a friend of mine saw Freeman Dyson give a lecture based on the work he did that led up to The Sun, the Genome and the Internet. (I didn't attend the lecture, but the book was absolutely wonderful.)And, last but not least, George Dyson talking about von Neumann.
My friend tries to tell me about this lecture. He remembers some of the main themes of the talk, but he draws a blank the presenter's name:
It was that famous dude. That old guy. Whatshisname. Esther Dyson's father.
Re:The Dysons
gnat on 2003-04-29T04:36:50
"Esther Dyson's father" indeed. Oy. That's like calling Larry Wall "the guy who wrote Shell.pm":-) --Nat
Re:The Dysons
pdcawley on 2003-04-29T05:06:54
Yeah! Everyone knows that Larry Wall's the guy that wrote rnRe:The Dysons
Dom2 on 2003-04-29T08:25:07
rn? perl? Nope, Larry's real contribution to the Internet and Unix was writing patch. Everybody knows that!-Dom
Re:The Dysons
jmm on 2003-04-29T13:17:44
patch? rn? perl?Forget about them. Larry's stellar contribution, the one the established his name in the universe of programming stars, was warp.
whose volume of special effects has, apparently, caused the release date to be moved
You might want to check the date that the news of this change broke.
Re:lotr 3
ziggy on 2003-04-29T14:44:19
A mere coincidence.The Academy has looked away from the first two LOTR movies at the Oscars because there's another one coming. If ROTK has a chance of winning an Oscar, it won't be this year when there are 2 Matrix sequals it's competing against.
That's certainly not the primary concern going through Peter Jackson's head, but it's bound to be something in the back of his mind. And a good reason to juice up the FX budget.
:-) Re:April Fools
shiflett on 2003-04-29T20:52:33
You know, all of the April Fools stuff has made me not trust anything mentioned or created on that date.
Recently, I was going to download openssh-3.6.1p1.tar.gz, but when I realized it was released on April 1, I decided that was not the version for me.
:-) On a side note, I think Nat was being funny; I'm sure he knew that LotR thing was a joke.
Re:April Fools
gnat on 2003-04-30T00:22:57
Actually, you give me far too much credit. I guess I should ask Milton before I postOn a side note, I think Nat was being funny; I'm sure he knew that LotR thing was a joke.:-) How embarrassing to be a sucker in public. --Nat
Any chance of resurrecting the idea of holding an OSCON in Europe someday?
Re:Jealous
jmm on 2003-04-29T13:19:18
First you'll have to talk Nat into restarting the town hall meetings...:-) Re:Jealous
gnat on 2003-04-30T00:24:41
The last time I spoke definitively on the subject, I said we were going to do a European OSCON. Then the economy turned to shite and we abandoned those plans. So rather than attempt to definitely say yes or no, I'll say that we talk about it every year but that so far we haven't decided to try again.Any chance of resurrecting the idea of holding an OSCON in Europe someday?--Nat
