By Brian Proffitt
Managing Editor
Yes, welcome to a special Wednesday edition of the Editor’s
Note, as I pack my bags and hit the road for travel, adventure, and
a little gig we like to call LinuxWorld Conference and Expo.
Actually, before the conference I am taking a little vacation
time to spend with the family, followed by the semi-annual
pilgrimage to San Francisco. I have to tell you, I am a bit more
excited about the vacation than the trip to LWE, even though the
former will be to Ohio and the latter will be to, well, one of the
coolest places on the planet.
No, I cannot seem to get too worked up about this summer’s
LinuxWorld, though it is difficult to say why. It could be the fact
that most of the time I will be working on interviewing lots of
suit types while still maintaining the site from an expo floor that
I hope this year will be under a wireless cloud. Last year it
wasn’t, and trudging back and forth to a network port in the press
room got downright silly.
It could also be the fact that the sense of fun for this
conference is getting more depleted every year. The .org Pavillion
is usually a blast, and The Linux Show booth will be fun (mostly
because I love to heckle people in the audience from the table),
but after that, what is there?
Sure, there’s the Golden Penguin Bowl, but somehow watching that
always makes me feel kind of, well, stupid. The massagers out on
the Expo floor are a nice touch, but after a few back surgeries,
they aren’t coming near me. Penelope is always good for a laugh,
but after she sharply rebuffed me in 2000–well, that’s neither
here nor there, is it?
I should be excited about this event, though, because, after the
(temporary?) closing of Comdex, the LinuxWorld Expos are probably
one of the most attention-getting IT conferences out there. What
else is there? TechEd? OracleWorld? Pfft! Amateurs. Of course,
there’s the mega SCOForum event going on at the same time at next
week’s LWE, and that will surely… no, it’s just too lame this
year even for a half-hearted attempt at a joke.
My categorization of LWE as a major event can certainly hold
water, and it may answer another question that’s popped up of late:
why there are so many anti-Linux, FUD-ish articles out there right
now. While I don’t think there’s any grand conspiracy, I do think
that the more pro-Microsoft writers and analysts out there would
like to dull the glimmer coming out of San Francisco.
I also think that the whole bunch of them are still smarting
from the literary pasting that everyone gave them about Internet
Explorer last month. Thus, the reactionary “Linux sucks on the
desktop” articles.
Regardless, I have begun to wonder if LinuxWorld, as a community
event, has just been marginalized to death. It is now the home of
the vendors and the customers,and much of the flavor of the Linux
community has been dulled. I found myself wishing that I’d gone to
OSCON this week instead.
This is just my opinion. But, while I am on vacation, feel free
to share what you think is wrong or right about LinuxWorld these
days. Oh, since my boss will be running the site for the rest of
the week, the random “I think Brian is doing a great job” talkback
here and there won’t hurt either.
See you on the show floor, or on the Web.