Colin Charles Agenda

The attendees were not satisfied with the first answer RMS gave to Brian, that Harish Pillay (Chief Technical Architect, Red Hat Singapore), chose to ask RMS what more he had to say, with regards to the letter he’d written. He answered quite candidly in this video, which Brian chimed in for as well.

The back channel for all this was Twitter… Don’t hesitate to follow @harishpillay, @brianaker, @piawaugh or even @webmink (Simon Phipps, while not at the event, was available on Twitter). Some interesting reading, naturally.

At foss.my 2009, Brian Aker asked Richard Stallman at his keynote, about the Oracle/Sun acquisition (with a focus on MySQL), with regards to the parallel licensing approach used by MySQL. Brian was referring to:

As only the original rights holder can sell commercial licenses, no new forked version of the code will have the ability to practice the parallel licensing approach, and will not easily generate the resources to support continued development of the MySQL platform.

from Richard’s Letter to the EC opposing Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL. Listen to the discussion between Brian and Richard.

foss.my 2009 is happening October 24-25 2009, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. There is already a tremendous schedule, and the registration prices are still ridiculously cheap.

If you’re in the region, consider flying in by many of the budget airlines available. Also, time is running out to register to win a free netbook, for two lucky winners. I hear it comes with GNU/Linux pre-loaded :)

In other news, the foss.my team had a press conference on Tuesday 6 October 2009, and the superstar reporter from The Star, Joanne Timbuong already wrote up a good article for The Star’s In.Tech titled: Open-source experts gathering at Foss.my.

So, great program, great lineup, what’s keeping you from registering?

Just to set the record straight, OSDC.my 2009 has no relation to foss.my. They have a different theme, a highly swank location (i.e. not a place of higher education), it is not community run (there are community members in the committee though), and its sponsored by MDEC.

In fact, I’m not even sure what the event is called – it may differ between OSDC.my to MSC OSCON.my. Mad props to the folk behind the real OSDC (community run, in a different city within Australia) and O’Reilly’s OSCON, since their names are really popular :-)

Now, what about foss.my 2009? Its about time we started planning for the event. foss.my 2008 was most successful, held during November 8-9 2008, but a lot of students complained — they didn’t like the time, as they had exams before or after the event (heck, even one of the crew members, had an exam the next day!).

So, let me ask a few questions, and feel free to reply in comments:

1. What timeframe would work best for foss.my 2009? In terms of a month, is September or October better? Keep in mind we don’t want other event clashes.
2. Do you want foss.my 2009 to be longer? Two days, with two tracks, seemed to be a little short for people.
3. If so, how many days do you want foss.my 2009 to be?
4. Do you want it to run through the weekend (so maybe Saturday, Sunday, Monday)?

International folk should answer this too… because you’ll probably be coming to attend, to speak, to mingle, etc. Do you want to come at a time when Malaysia has a colourful event? Do you want to see parts of KL or other parts of Malaysia?

Disclosure: I don’t speak for anyone else on the past/current/future foss.my committee, just myself.

It’s over! I can’t speak for the others, but I know I’m still recovering. In summary: the event was awesome.

The Organising Committee

First, a word of thanks, to the people that didn’t get enough of it – the amazing organising committee, who scurried around for both the days (and much before that too – besides, we only had 43 days), to make sure things were a-happening. In no particular order:

• Aizat – You rock. From handling the registrations (since we don’t have a good payment gateway in Malaysia, he had to see photos, scanned receipts, and a lot more crap), to handling the registration desk, to writing “updates?” to the mailing list, to creating the initial website, to updating the website as and when I tell him to, to handling the volunteers and probably so much more – you rock. Thank you. You are now officially the foss.my registration and website dude.
• Ditesh – From the initial website, right down to monitoring the halls, to giving suggestions to whom might be great local speakers, to dropping in and giving a most fabulous keynote, you rock.
• Angch – Hall monitor, to bank account bootstrapper, and all around great help, you rock. Thanks for also getting your company to be a sponsor!
• Yoon Kit – From the press, right down to the speaker gifts, if it wasn’t for you, there would be no opening keynote. You rock!
• Kaeru – From the initial idea, to handling the PR, for sponsoring the event, and for giving a last minute talk about ORCA, while the speaker was down with a bad fever, you rock. And folk, he did this all while changing jobs!
• Izhar – You did the posters. You did the amazing “I Love…” badges. You handled the food preparation. You also participated in a “side session”. You sorted out hotels. And you had exams on Monday (the day after foss.my). You rock for being an all round gopher! Your mother also rocks :)
• Yondie – You’re Mr. Subway. Thank you for sorting out the food, and thank you for harnessing the power of volunteers to make sure things ran smoothly. You are now officially the foss.my food dude (probably alongside Izhar :P).
• Wariola – You’re Mr. T-Shirts. Without you, there will be no foss.my t-shirts, so you rock!
• Gurdip – Not enough can be said about you. Thank you for giving us the great location, that was APIIT, to sorting out the logistics, the driver, the booking of hotels, to getting the nice (and easy on the eyes) volunteers, to making sure the network worked, to ensuring we had power sockets, you rock!
• Suanie – Without you, we would have no speaker/organiser/volunteer party. Without you, there would be no press. You rock, and we’re sorry you couldn’t be at the event (hope the weekend in Singapore was productive, though).
• Firdaus – For registering foss.my events, with the RoS, and for also going to get that bank account, you rock.

The Volunteers
Thank you for taking time off from your busy weekend, to come spend time with a bunch of free and open source lovers. There has to also be a special mention to Sean, who single-handedly sorted out the logo for us, early in the game.

The rest
Speakers, you rock. Without you, there would be no event in under 45 days (on Sunday, led the 45th day).

Sponsors, you rock. Without you, this event would have to cost a lot more money, and nobody would have liked that.

If I missed anyone, E&OE.

In conclusion
I believe foss.my has been deemed as a technical conference. Fluffy talks weren’t taken kindly to, even during the lighting talk sessions.

I believe foss.my will continue to exist in 2009.

I believe foss.my will be longer than two days, to ensure that there is enough time to move in between rooms, hack while you’re there, and so on.

So, to foss.my 2009, bigger and better, and a lot more well planned, than foss.my 2008 :) Don’t forget to give us feedback.

As a heads up, we’re one day towards foss.my and the wheel’s a turning. Our numbers are good – i.e. we’ve officially been oversubscribed. Looking at statistics last generated by Aizat, we have about 20 t-shirts left for those that have already paid to attend the event. That means if you’re still in the unpaid status, don’t hesitate to hop on over and drop us some much needed moolah.

The schwag report: Novell carry bags. Mozilla stickers, pins, tattoos, and more. The very nice foss.my t-shirt.

Just remember, schwag are of course for a first registered, first paid, first given basis :) There’s a limited amount of schwag, so what are you waiting for? Go on and pay us already.

You can also of course walk in to the event and pay on the spot. Its just that schwag will almost definitely be limited/non-existent!

Less than 20 hours to the event, or so says the countdown on foss.my. Excited!
Update: Just to be clear. If you’ve paid up, you’re getting your schwag. Officially, there are about 20 more slots to completion till we hit schwag fatigue, so beyond that, there are no guarantees of goodies. So pay up, and pay early!