End User Collaboration Summit Announced

The Linux Foundation, the non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced the first Linux Foundation End User Collaboration Summit. The summit is a unique opportunity for end users to learn and interact with leaders from within the Linux community, including the highest level maintainers and developers.

The inaugural summit will take place October 13-14, 2008, at the Desmond Tutu Center in New York, New York and will provide end users a direct connection and voice to the kernel community. It will also give Linux community maintainers and developers direct access to knowledge sharing opportunities with the users of their software.

The event was created at the request of the Linux Foundation's Technical Advisory Board, which is comprised of key Linux community members. By bringing together sophisticated end users and senior Linux developers, the Linux Foundation hopes to accelerate innovation and adoption of Linux.

Highlights of the Linux Foundation End User Summit will include:

• An address from Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian, which will include a Q&A with the Linux Foundation's executive director Jim Zemlin.
• A discussion with Paul Cormier, executive vice president and president, Products and Technologies, Red Hat.
• One-on-one discussions between end users and key Linux maintainers James Bottomley, Dave Jones, Christoph Lameter, Chris Mason, Andrew Morton, Arjan van de Ven, Chris Wright, and many more.
• A panel featuring notable Linux end users from the New York Stock Exchange, The Chicago Mercantile Exchange, AIG, Credit Suisse, Fidelity National Information Services, and more.
• A keynote address from Anthony Williams, co-author of the best-selling book Wikinomics, on how mass collaboration is changing the economics of the software industry, with far reaching implications for end users.
• Jon Corbet from LWN.net will present the Linux Weather Forecast, with a spotlight on where the Linux kernel is headed in the next 12 to 24 months.
• A candid discussion about end user participation in Linux with Rishab Ghosh and Red Monk's Stephen O'Grady.

"The open source development model is unique. End users not only give feedback on the software; they're a fundamental and critical part of the community, submitting patches and developing new features themselves," said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. "Before this event, however, there was no neutral forum that would advance and optimize this collaboration. The End User Summit will fill this gap and accelerate problem solving for Linux."

The Linux Foundation fosters innovation by hosting events for the Linux technical community, application developers, industry and end users. These events help to solve pressing issues facing Linux and fuel collaboration and communication between all members of the Linux ecosystem: developers, users, industry, ISVs and distribution vendors. Other Linux Foundation events include a mix of industry and community conferences such as its annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summits, Kernel Summit, the Linux Plumbers Conference and the Linux Foundation Legal Summits.

More information on this and other events can be found at here.