“Wednesday was certainly a day of big news here at the Open
Source Convention. Sun’s announcement of the release of StarOffice
under the GPL was momentous. …there was the usual mix of
relief and skepticism among open source advocates that accompanies
licensing announcements, however well-intentioned, from Sun. In
this case, there seemed to be grudging respect for what Sun is
doing.”
“There was even more buzz, however, about the new plan for
Perl development announced by Larry Wall in his “State of the
Onion” address. Larry announced the establishment of working
groups on various topics that would replace the “porters” concept
in use up to this point. There was lots of emotion surrounding this
announcement; the people involved in perl5porters are among the
most loyal and most dedicated members of the Perl community, and
this announcement will change the way they can be involved with the
development of Perl 6.”
“Andy Herzfeld’s keynote address linked the development of the
Apple II and the Macintosh with the hacker culture and the current
interest in open source development. Andy, a principal at Eazel and
a former member of both the Apple II and Macintosh development
team, is uniquely qualified to make this insight.”