Big Names in FOSS to Keynote LinuxCon; Mini-Summits Announced

The Linux Foundation announced the first round of keynote speakers and several mini-summits for its upcoming conference, LinuxCon. The event, scheduled for August 10-12, 2010 in Boston, MA, draws FOSS users and developers from around the country to learn, discuss, and collaborate on all things Linux.

Speakers this year include:

Ravi Simhambhatla, vice president and chief information officer at Virgin America, the San Francisco-based domestic airline. Simhambhatla will share with LinuxCon attendees how he sold the use of Linux and open source to internal colleagues and how he and his teams are maximizing it today.

Eben Moglen, founding director of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC). Moglen will discuss legal defense strategies for Linux and open source software projects, including an update on GPLv2 and GPLv3 adoption.

Stormy Peters, executive director of the GNOME Foundation. Peters will explore how data is being stored and accessed in the cloud and what that means for Linux and open source.

Jeffrey S. Hammond, principal analyst, Forrester Research. Hammond will present recent data that shows increased developer adoption of open source platforms, frameworks and development processes as well as heightened awareness by IT management of the benefits of a mixed source development model.

One highlight of each year's LinuxCon is the Linux Kernel Roundtable, an opportunity for the community to hear thoughts from some of the top maintainers of the Linux kernel. This year's panelists include:

James Bottomley, Novell distinguished engineer and Linux Kernel maintainer of the SCSI subsystem, the Linux Voyager port and the 53c700 driver

Jon Corbet, Linux kernel developer and editor, Linux Weekly News (LWN);

Dave Jones, Fedora kernel maintainer

Chris Mason, director of Linux kernel engineering at Oracle and creator of the btrfs file system

Ted Ts’o, North America’s first kernel developer and fellow at Google

This year's mini-summits will be held on August 9th and include sessions on Linux Security, Bluetooth, Tracing and Power Management; Xen Directions; KVM Forum; and a Linux Storage & Filesystems Workshop.

Keep up with the latest LinuxCon announcements and information on Twitter, or by checking in on the event's webpage. If you plan to attend, make arrangements now because early bird registration ends on May 6th.