OStatic

Today Linux Magazine, the Linux Foundation, and CeBIT organizers announced that they are taking applications for a limited number of free booths at the CeBIT 2009 conference. The global IT tradeshow, taking place March 3-8, 2009, in Hannover, Germany, will focus on open source software as a central theme for the first time.

From now until October 30th, open source projects are invited to bid for booth space at the conference.

The seventh August Penguin conference, for open-source programmers, managers, and users in Israel, took place in Tel Aviv earlier today. The August Penguin was sponsored by the Israeli open-source advocacy group, HaMakor ( the source ), and co-sponsored by a number of other organizations, ranging from the Israeli branch of the Internet Society, to small companies servicing the open-source sector, to Microsoft. About 300 open-source advocates gathered for half a day of technical and general lectures, as well as socializing, around the common theme of open source.

RailsConf, the main conference for the Ruby on Rails community, took place in Portland, Oregon over this past weekend. I wasn't able to attend, which is really a shame; I was at the first RailsConf in Chicago in 2006, and learned a great deal from the talks, as well as from the other Rails hackers in the audience. While the social aspects of a conference can't easily be recreated away from the conference, it is possible to watch and read a number of the presentations and lectures from RailsConf 2008. I have been doing that over the last few days, and have a few to recommend to other RailsConf-challenged fans.

The Apache Sofware Foundation's 2008 conference in Europe is taking place this week, with formal sessions starting today. In the coming days, I'll describe several ASF-sponsored projects that are interesting and useful, which offer useful functionality and a general promise of quality.

What does the ASF do, and what sorts of programs are discussed at the conference?