LinuxCon, 20th Anniversary of Linux Celebration Kicks Off

Today is a big day for the Linux community. I’m writing this from Vancouver, B.C. where Users, SysAdmins, developers and business executives have gathered for the third annual LinuxCon and the official celebration of the 20th Anniversary of Linux.

This week is about celebrating as a community the accomplishments of the last 20 years and to collaborate on how we advance Linux for another 20 years. We’re lucky to have the foremost experts on these topics on hand at LinuxCon: Linux creator Linus Torvalds, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst, legal authority Eben Moglen, IBM Linux leader Dan Frye and others. Renowned Internet and society author Clay Shirky will share how Linux and collaborative development have spread into other areas of culture and what that means for the future of technology. These are just a few examples of the speakers and content we’re looking forward to today through Friday.

It’s also a natural time to reflect on how Linux user behaviors have changed over the last two decades. We recently conducted a survey of our registered LinuxCon attendees and learned some interesting things about the differences between Linux usage a decade ago versus how they use Linux today. For example, more people use Linux at work today than they did 10 years ago. And, Linux distribution preferences have also evolved. We put the data into a new infographic that includes other key data points, illustrating the past and the present: “Linux: Then & Now.” (You can view the infographic here.)

The 20th Anniversary Linux Gallery is also opening today (located right next to LinuxCon registration) and includes more than 120 donations from community members. I invite everyone to take the self-guided tour and take a step back in time to when it took 80 floppies to install Slackware Linux (thanks to Slackware Founder Patrick Volkerding for donating a portion of those original floppies to the Gallery). For those of you who can’t join us onsite, we are producing a video tour and slideshow to share the experience with you online. Just keep an eye on Linux.com.

We also want to bring attention to a variety of news announcements being made this week. Here are a few highlights:

* SPDX Working Group, a project and community hosted by The Linux Foundation, today is announcing the availability of SPDX 1.0. The SPDX standard helps facilitate compliance with free and open source software licenses by standardizing the way license information is shared across the software supply chain. This is a significant milestone and demonstrates the power of collaboration among industry participants.

* Wind River is announcing Wind River Linux 4, Update Pack 2, a graphics-rich Linux platform that supplies an integrated graphics software stack for the latest Intel and TI processors.

* LinuxCon sponsor FireHost is announcing that it is partnering with leading data encryption provider Gazzang. More information is on the company’s blog (http://www.fireblog.com/now-offering-database-encryption-for-your-lamp-stack/).

*Protecode is launching a major new product feature that it says will make open source software adoption in an organization even simpler

Last but not least: tonight, we party! The LinuxCon Gala begins at 6:30 p.m. at the Commodore Ballroom and it’s black tie optional. If you want to dress up, there are tuxedo and costume rentals available onsite throughout the day. We have two live bands, full dinner and an unforgettable collection of characters.

Please join us to celebrate the largest collaborative development project in the history of computing. We’ve all contributed to this moment.