The tenth annual Debian Developer Conference has opened in New York City, marking the first time the event has been held in the U.S. The event will explore the latest developments with the Debian Linux distribution, which is popular among embedded Linux developers, and also offers the foundation for Linux distros including Ubuntu Linux, Xandros, and Google's Chrome OS.

The Debian Developer Conference, the world's largest GNU/Linux distribution developers conference, is taking place at Columbia University Aug. 1-7.

The Debian Project, the team behind the free Debian GNU/Linux operating system, is inviting developers to participate in the event. This year's conference is sponsored by the Columbia University Computer Science Department and the 2010 conference marks the first time the DebConf has been held in the United States.

More than 3,000 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and maintain Debian GNU/Linux, which, of course, is the operating system behind a variety of other Linux distros. For instance, Debian spawned the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, along with Xandros, Linspire, DreamLinux, and others.

Translated into 27 languages, and supporting a huge range of computer architectures, Debian calls itself the "universal operating system," and is the largest free software project in the world. In the United States, Debian is backed by Software in the Public Interest, a not-for-profit public charity.

In addition to a full schedule of technical, social and policy talks, DebConf provides an opportunity for developers, contributors and other interested people to meet in person and work together more closely. It has taken place annually since 2000 in locations as varied as Canada, Finland and Mexico.

This year, more than 300 developers from all over the world, including Brazil, Argentina, Bosnia, Mexico, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Venezuela, and Latvia, will participate in the conference.

Every year, DebConf enables new and existing Debian project participants from around the world to assemble, share knowledge and ideas, make collaborative contributions to Debian, and build tighter community bonds. Conference costs are largely supported by corporate sponsors who find significant interest in supporting Debian and DebConf.

For the first time, DebConf will host "tracks," featuring a cluster of talks linked by a common theme. These include tracks on Science/Math, Java, Enterprise Systems, Debian Community Outreach, and Media and Art in Debian. Other talks will cover technical, licensing and community issues by a host of Debian developers and other leaders in the Free Software community.

Eben Moglen (pictured), chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center and Professor of Law at Columbia University, will be the conference's plenary speaker on Aug. 3 at 10 a.m.

Moreover, DebConf also included Debian Day, which was held on Aug. 1. When the conference opened its doors, anyone interested in finding out more about Debian and free software could ask questions of experts. During this event, there was a full day of talks on a variety of subjects such as free software advocacy, free software usability, and a number of talks on the Debian project and operating system itself.

Availability

DebConf 2010 is taking place at Columbia University in New York City through Aug. 7. More information about DebConf is available here.

Darryl K. Taft is a writer for our sister publication, eWEEK.

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