The Linux Foundation has announced sessions for its Collaboration Summit, scheduled for Apr. 14-16 at the Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco. This year's event features a full-day workgroup on MeeGo, as well as discussions of Linux topics including toolchain, cloud computing, printing, filesystems, ISV porting, and open source compliance.

The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit is an invitation-only event, but as with last year's event, registrants to the co-located CE Linux Forum (CELF) Embedded Linux Conference (ELC) held on Apr. 12-14, are invited to attend. The Collaboration Summit will bring together a cross-section of leaders from the Linux developer, industry, and end-user communities to discuss a wide variety of Linux issues, says the non-profit Linux Foundation (LF). The event is sponsored by IBM and Intel, with additional support from Google, HP, and Nokia.

Aiming to "accelerate collaboration and problem solving," the meeting covers a much broader selection of topics than ELC, ranging from the embedded Linux world to desktop distributions to virtualization in the enterprise. A central focus of both conferences is the course of the Linux kernel that drives all these incarnations of Linux.

Linux kernel panelists include (left to right) James Bottomley (SCSI subsystem maintainer), Jon Corbet (LWN.net), and Greg Kroah-Hartman (USB subsystem maintainer and renowned Android killer)

This year the conference will feature the new Moblin/Maemo mobile distribution merger, MeeGo, with a full-day session and a keynote by Nokia's Ari Jaaksi. The LF hosts the Intel- and Nokia-backed project, which spans the market from smartphones to netbooks.

The LF cites mobile computing, cloud computing, and legal topics as the three main threads of this year's Collaboration Summit. Beyond MeeGo sessions and a Wind River presentation on IP issues in embedded Linux, the event does not appear to focus much on mobile or embedded issues. Many sessions, however, cover fundamentals that affect embedded, such as a yearly Linux kernel panel featuring top maintainers like Andrew Morton and James Bottomley, and a regular meeting of the Linux Standard Base (LSB) workgroup.

Highlights of the 2010 LF Collaboration Summit on the first day of the conference, include:

• The state of the Linux union (keynote) -- Jim Zemlin, Executive Director, LF
  
  
• 10 years of Linux at IBM (keynote) -- Daniel Frye, VP, Open Systems Development, IBM, and LF board member
  
  
• Does open source mean open cloud?(panel) -- John Mark Walker of Community Root, LLC, hosts a panel on the fate of open source software in a cloud environment that seems to favor proprietary control. Panelists include Matt Asay, COO, Canonical; David Lutterkort, principal software engineer, Red Hat; Sam Ramji, VP, Sonoa Systems; and Doug Tidwell, senior software engineer, IBM.
  
  
• The Linux Kernel: What's next? (panel) -- This yearly kernel roundtable panel event features James Bottomley, Jon Corbet, Christoph Hellwig, Greg Kroah-Hartman, and co-maintainer of Ext3 and JPD Andrew Morton (pictured at right).
  
  
• MeeGo: A free & standard Linux OS for the mobile industry (keynote) -- Nokia VP Ari Jaaksi provides an overview of the Moblin/Maemo merger.
  
  
• Patches, projects, platforms, kernels and forks (keynote) -- Chris DiBona, Google
  
  
• Why your life might depend on your code (keynote) -- Alexander Schanz, head of Data Center, DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH, on Germany's switch to Linux for air traffic control systems
  
  
• How to prevent community: Making sure your pond stays small (keynote) -- Josh Berkus, COO, PostgreSQL Experts offers a tongue-and-cheek discussion of community dynamics: ("Users. All of them pestering you and wasting your time. If only you could make them just 'go away'. Well, now you can...").

In addition to these Wednesday presentations, there will be half-, full- and multi-day workgroups and sessions on Thursday and Friday, including:

• Linux Standard Base (workgroup) -- This annual two-day LSB pow-wow focuses on reducing differences between individual distributions, reducing application porting costs, and easing the ISV development process.
  
  
• FOSSBazaar (workgroup) -- Two-day workgroup on open source software
  
  
• Legal for non-lawyers (sessions) -- This all-day event, led by LF legal counsel Karen Copenhaver, covers copyright, licensing, and open source management. Speakers include Keith Bergelt, CEO OIN; Kate Stewart on SPDX; Bradley Kuhn of the SFLC on GPLv3; Palm's Ibrahim Haddad on open source compliance; and Wind River's Mark Gisi on IP integrity issues in open source embedded projects.
  
  
• MeeGo (workgroup) -- All-day session on the LF's new Moblin/Maemo mashup.
  
  
• High performance computing (session) -- Bernard Golden of HyperStratus hosts session with executives from IBM and Bull on using Linux for HPC.
  
  
• Linux Tracing (sessions) -- Oracle's Elena Zannoni will host two days of discussions on tracing infrastructure for the Linux kernel and userspace programs.
  
  
• Virtualization (session) -- This session explores different virtualization solutions available with Linux.
  
  
• Driver backport (workgroup) -- Topics include a distribution-agnostic driver exchange format, DKMS, Jockey and PackageKit collaboration/integration, and the online driver database.
  
  
• Filesystems (session) -- Hosted by Red Hat's Ric Wheeler
  
  
• Desktop (session) -- Reps from major desktop distros ponder Linux on the PC.
  
  
• Open Printing (workgroup) -- This two-day workgroup discusses projects aiming to make printing on Linux "just work."
  
  
• Toolchain (session) -- Hosted by Oracle's Elena Zannoni, this session covers optimizations to GCC, C++, Gold (Linker), and other plugins, plus infrastructure improvements, runtime libraries, and debug cycles.
  
  
• Green Linux (session) -- Jeff Heroux of IBM discusses reducing power consumption in data centers using Linux on the IBM Power platform.

Availability

The invitation-only 2010 Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit is scheduled for Apr. 14-16 at the Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco. More information may be found here.

---

Related Stories:

• Linux summit surprises
• Linux kernel maintainer calls for embedded specialist
• LinuxCon opens for registration, paper submission
• Moblin and Maemo merge as Qt-based MeeGo
• Embedded Linux keynotes to grapple with Android
• Google's phone struggles but wins convert in Linus Torvalds
• Open source Linux device drivers submitted by -- Microsoft?
• Amid controversy, Microsoft launches open source group
• Intel lets go of Moblin
• LSB 4 is out the door -- almost

Discuss Linux summit dissects MeeGo   >>> Be the FIRST to comment on this article!

>>> More News Articles          >>> More By Eric Brown