Registration has opened for O'Reilly's 2004 Open Source Convention (OSCON), set for July 26-30th in Portland, Oregon. This year marks the seventh year for the conference, which is usually well-attended by Linux developers.

According to Program Chair Nathan Torkington, OSCON aims to address technical as well as management topics. “Open source mindshare is gained and lost, not by legal battles, but by technical and economic decisions by developers, administrators, and their managers,” Torkington said.

Keynotes, speakers, and events will include:

• Robert Lefkowitz of AT&T Wireless deconstructs the semasiology of open source
• Milton Ngan of Weta Digital wraps up his LOTR (Lord of the Rings) keynote trilogy
• Novell's Vice Chairman Chris Stone, on making open source a mainstream reality
• Bdale Garbee, Linux CTO of HP, on the importance of community development
• Tim O'Reilly outlines new trends
• Damian Conway, Guido van Rossum, Monty Widenius, Eric Raymond, Theodore Ts'o, and Mitchell Kapor lead convention sessions and panels focusing on Linux, PHP, Python, Perl, Apache, XML, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Security (new this year), Emerging Topics, Java, and Ruby
• SCO Moot Court, organized by UC Berkeley law professor Pam Samuelson and Groklaw founder Pamela Jones
• NASA's Jeff Norris sharing how open source software played a major role in operating the Spirit and Opportunity Mars Exploration Rovers, illustrated with pictures and anecdotes
• Larry Wall's perennial “State of the Onion” address
• A talk by Paul Graham, author of the upcoming “Hackers & Painters”
• A sprinkling of award presentations, including the first-ever Open Source Awards presented by the Open Source Initiative and ZDNet
• Receptions with authors, both at the convention and at Portland's venerable Powell's Books.

For more details, and online registration, visit O'Reilly's Website.

 
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