OStatic

Computerworld reported today that the Linux Foundation plans to add another conference to its events repertoire -- LinuxCon.

LinuxCon is targeting both developers and users, and will ideally foster new lines of communication between these two groups. Unlike some past Linux Foundation events, which were invitation only, this conference will be open to anyone who wishes to attend.

The Linux Plumbers Conference may have ended last Friday, but the discussions -- and one discussion in particular -- will be analyzed, deconstructed, and argued for quite a bit longer.

Greg Kroah-Hartman's assertion is that Canonical doesn't contribute significantly to kernel development and the packages that make up the core of a Linux system. Canonical CTO Matt Zimmerman responded to this assertion. It seems at that point, much of the community, developers and users alike, took to examining their particular parts of the open source elephant.

Herein lies the problem.

The Digital Divide -- there isn't a nation where it doesn't exist, yet it seems so relative. In one place, a child going online via dial up using a PII seems at a disadvantage. Elsewhere, that child has a tool that could change his life. The opportunity to learn not only facts, but how everything fits together is platform independent. The PII is just as valuable as a new laptop costing thousands. Both are meaningless if children can't access all they offer. Any technology costs money.

Open source has much to offer here. Lower costs, good support for old hardware, and software that can be modified to individual needs. OLPC champions low-cost laptops for every child. Userful takes a different approach.

Red Hat, along with the City University of New York and Intel, announced yesterday that they are creating the New York City Open Source Solutions Lab. This lab, which will be headquartered at CUNY's Institute for Software Design and Development in Manhattan, is aimed at helping local and state government agencies in New York take advantage of open-source solutions. The lab will provide governments with the ability to develop and test a variety of open-source technologies running on Intel chips.