The Linux Foundation announced keynotes and a full program for its Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, scheduled April 6-8 in San Francisco. Featuring keynotes from Google's Michael Rubin and Qualcomm's Mark Charlebois, the event will kick off this year's Linux 20th anniversary celebrations, leading up to an official celebration in August.

In August 1991, Linux creator Linus Torvalds (pictured) posted a now famous announcement of an unnamed operating system that somewhat resembled Unix derivative Minix. The OS soon became known as Linux, and now increasingly dominates the server, embedded, and mobile markets while continuing to struggle along on the desktop (hope springs eternal).

At the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, scheduled April 6-8 at the Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco, the Linux Foundation (LF) will kick off this year's 20th anniversary celebrations of Linux.

Among other events, there will be an opportunity for attendees to record a personal message to the Linux community about Linux' past, present, and future in a "20th Anniversary Video Booth." The non-profit Linux advocacy organization says it will also announce plans for the official celebration in August.

As always, the Collaboration Summit is an invitation-only event, but this year it will be open to the press for the first time. We cover it here because it is indeed, as the LF puts it, the premier event "where a cross-section of leaders from the Linux developer, industry and end user communities meet face-to-face to tackle today's most pressing issues facing Linux, including technical development, legal topics, ISV porting and end user requirements."

In short, the Collaboration Summit is where the Linux movers and shakers move and shake.

We're also particularly interested in the event because this year's schedule is said to mirror "the changing landscape of Linux with keynotes and panels on the rising use of the OS in mobile and embedded products."

In addition, the Summit forms the opening bookend to something of a Linuxpalooza set to rock the Kabuki, starting with the 2011 Embedded Linux Conference (ELC) on Apr. 11-13, followed by a recently announced, inaugural Android Builders Summit also hosted by the LF, set for April 13-14.

The Android Builders Summit is a technical summit for OEMs, device manufacturers, integrators, custom builders, and the Android and Linux kernel developer communities, says the LF. The Summit is described as providing "an intimate forum for collaboration at the systems level and discussion of core issues and opportunities when designing Android devices." Might it also be intended to patch up the ongoing rift regarding Google's lack of Android contributions to the Linux kernel?

A rapprochement with Google is suggested by the LF's choice of keynotes for the Collaboration Summit, which directly follows the Android Builders Summit. Google's Michael Rubin — a technical lead for Google's Kernel Storage team who is not to be confused with Google's Android creator Andy Rubin — will discuss filesystems in the cloud.

Michael Rubin's talk appears to principally address enterprise storage issues, and might also deal with Google's floundering, Linux-based Chrome OS. However, another keynote from Mark Charlebois, director of Open Source Strategy at the Qualcomm Innovation Center (QuIC) will discuss how mobile demand is driving innovations in Linux. (Qualcomm is still the leading chipmaker behind Linux-based Android phones, although Samsung and Texas Instruments have cut into that lead, and now Nvidia is making its push with the Tegra 2.)

Additional highlights of the LF Collaboration Summit are said to include:

• Yocto Project — A panel of experts will discuss how collaboration in the embedded Linux community can increase software consistencies and ease development, says the LF. Panelists from Texas Instruments and Wind River will join ex-Apple executive and industry luminary Steve Sakoman in a discussion moderated by the LF's Jim Zemlin.

  The LF-hosted, embedded-focused Yocto Project recently announced it was aligning and merging technology with the OpenEmbedded community, and said it would announce more details at the Collaboration Summit.

• Linux Kernel Panel — This yearly kernel powwow includes James Bottomley, Linux SCSI subsystem maintainer and distinguished engineer at Novell; Jon Corbet, kernel developer and editor at Linux Weekly News (LWN,net); Thomas Gleixner, Linux kernel developer and real-time Linux expert; and Andrew Morton, co-maintainer of the Ext3 filesystem and the journalling layer for block devices.
  

  Collaboration Summit presenters (left to right), James Bottomley, Jon Corbet, and Greg Kroah-Hartman

• Hardware Success Stories — Linux Kernel Developer Greg Kroah-Hartman will moderate a panel that will share select Linux' Hardware Success Stories. Panelists from Intel, QuIC and Texas Instruments will participate.
• "What's Next for Linux in the Enterprise and the Cloud" — This panel will address the latest advancements in Linux and cloud computing. Panelists from AMD, DeviceVM/Splashtop, and Yahoo! will participate in this discussion led by the LF's Jim Zemlin.
• Workgroup meetings — During days two and three of the event, attendees will split into workgroup meetings to address topics such as OpenPrinting, MeeGo, Linux Standard Base (LSB), Open Compliance, Yocto, and Tracing. Perhaps here we will learn more about how MeeGo plans to continue now that Nokia has turned its attention to Windows Phone 7.
• Linux training — In parallel with the Collaboration Summit program, Linux training courses will be available at Hotel Kabuki including Linux Performance Tuning, Advanced Linux Performance Tuning and Embedded Linux Development: A Crash Course.

Stated the LF's Jim Zemlin, "The Summit will showcase how Linux is maturing while kicking off an important year for the OS that will include 20th anniversary celebrations where people from throughout the community can participate online or at our events in a variety of different ways."

Availability

The invitation-only Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit is scheduled for Apr. 6-8 in San Francisco at the Hotel Kabuki. The full schedule may be found at this Collaboration Summit schedule page, and requests for invitations may be found here.

This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.