By Emmett Plant
Linux Today
I’m currently typing this report from my room in the lovely
Hotel Empire at 63rd and Broadway in New York City, New York. The
reason I’m here is to cover TheBazaar, an Earthweb-sponsored
conference taking place on December 14th, 15th and 16th featuring
Linux and the Open Source community with keynotes from industry
luminaries Richard Stallman, Jon ‘maddog’ Hall, Bob Young, Michael
Cowpland, Robert Ferber, and consumer advocate and open-source fan
Ralph Nader. The ‘panel luminaries’ include Rob Malda and Jeff
Bates from Slashdot, Bruce Perens from the Linux Capital Group,
Chris DiBona from VA Linux and SVLUG, and Ken Coar, the Director of
the Apache Foundation.
TheBazaar promises to be an incredible technical conference, as
well as a conference tailor-made for the Linux and Open Source
enthusiast. The four hands-on Tutorial tracks are Platforms and
Servers, Development Tools and Languages, Desktop and Enterprise
System. The general sessions are arranged into three tracks,
Beginners, which claims to teach ‘The Language of Open Source,’
Enterprise Systems, which cover ‘Performance, Integration and
Usability,’ and the Developer track, which covers from ‘Development
Tools to Advanced Features.’
While conference goers are ready for the week ahead, many of the
exhibitors are using their appearance at TheBazaar as a springboard
to appearances at the first Linux World Expo 2000, taking place a
month and a half from now in the same location. Don’t be fooled,
though; TheBazaar has a killer list of exhibitors, running the
gamut from IBM to Red Hat to Copyleft. The community is also
represented with exhibitors from Debian, the Free Software
Foundation and Stampede, among many others.
Not to say that there aren’t going to be any parties.
Andover.net is throwing a big bash on Wednesday night, and
TheBazaar itself is planning to provide a super-big party
immediately afterwards at FAO Schwarz, quite possibly the biggest
and best toy store on the planet, if not just inside the limits of
Manhattan Island. You may remember seeing FAO Schwarz in the
‘dancing-on-the-piano’ scene of the Tom Hanks film ‘Big.’
LinuxToday will be covering TheBazaar with daily reports from
myself and Paul Ferris, to give the readers of LinuxToday
comprehensive coverage of the event. It’s going to be an exciting
week, and we look forward to bringing the best of it to LinuxToday
readers.
Tune in regularly at linuxtoday.com/special/bazaar.