ApacheCon Europe

I'm at ApacheCon Europe today, which is taking place here in Dublin.  This morning's keynote was presented by the eloquent Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu Foundation.  Mark spoke on the challenges facing the Free Software world. 

What am I doing here?  Why would Microsoft sponsor an Apache conference?  Tomorrow I'm going to be demonstrating "Atlas", Microsoft's free framework for building richer web-based applications.  Although Atlas can be tightly integrated with ASP.NET, its client-side libraries can be used with any server technology, including ASP, JSP and PHP.  So, in the spirit of this conference, I naturally plan to do some of my demo tomorrow on Apache, and show attendees a really impressive (and  free) technology that is turning heads!

In the meantime, I am really enjoying the conference, and although I've been encouraged by fellow conference attendee Shane to invest in a new flak jacket, my clothes are still tomato-free :)

In fact, I hope Mark's disposition in the keynote is reflective of this community.  I generally agreed with him on the role of the free software community in pushing technology forward.  I have a different vantage point (and perhaps a different stance) on how licensing is changing, but am in general agreement that licensing is changing and that companies like Microsoft need to continually re-evaluate the various types of licensing we employ.  My talk tomorrow will certainly reflect this. (Usual disclaimers apply to this post -- I am not a licensing expert and am speaking for myself!)

Mark cited Firefox as an example of how "when the free becomes as good as the commercial equivalent, we see an explosion of innovation."  The same is true in the realm of development tools: I get to show the amazing Visual Web Developer Express and SQL Express tomorrow, both of which are free to download and use.

Mark mentioned "sensory immersion" and "the extra dimension" as important future directions for open source.  Interestingly, he saw the "extra dimension" as being not 3D, but rather the 8 bits between RGB and RGBA -- in other words, adding transparency!  As he put it, Apple set the ball rolling with OS/X, and Microsoft is about to take the leap ahead with Vista.  (Actually, I see Vista's visuals as catch-up work. Our leap ahead will be when we empower all developers on the platform with WPF.) 

Anyway - gotta run - I want to catch the rest of the conference, have some beer (as in free) and put some polish on tomorrow's talk!  If you're at the conference, come find me and let me know what you'd like me to cover tomorrow.  I look like the photo in my blog except a little older and with a progessively-receding hairline :)

Comments

• Anonymous
  June 28, 2006
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  June 28, 2006
  you might want to show off the PHP demo ShankuN did; I also have a simplified version on my machine, if you want :)
• Anonymous
  June 28, 2006
  Christian, that was (and is) exactly my plan :)
  
  Could I get a chance to see the PHP chapter from your book... tonight? :)
• Anonymous
  June 28, 2006
  I just read the blog post from Tom Raftery about Microsoft losing the "Evil Empire" moniker... I hope you follow thru on your promise to wear a Darth Vader t-shirt to the presentation :-)  Anyway, my mam always tell me never to blog after beer, so .... signing off!
• Anonymous
  June 28, 2006
  shoot -- I somehow fell asleep tonight way too early and just saw this right now. :-( Sorry. But I am sitting in your presentation right now and so far it's running fine ;-)