OREGON DAYS

This year’s Open Source Conference (OSCON) in Portland, Oregon, continued the trend of increasing popularity and higher attendance. Between July 24th and 28th, more than 2,800 attendees experienced tutorials and conference tracks on Perl, Python, PHP, JavaScript/ Ajax, MySQL, and PostgreSQL, Linux, and Apache. Talks on legal topics and industry field reports were also well received. Major industry players like Google, Yahoo, Sun, HP, IBM, Intel, and AMD were present in the exhibition hall, showcasing their Open Source efforts and looking for programming talent. The traditional Google-O’Reilly Open Source Awards went to outstanding developers Julian Seward (Valgrind) and Peter Lundblad (Subversion), but also to community and legal activists Gervase Markham (Firefox) and Cliff Schmidt. For the best corporate liaison, Stefan Taxhet was recognized for OpenOffice.org. The Perl community’s “White Camel Awards” went to Perl podcaster Josh McAdams, to Jay Hannah for running the Perl Mongers, and to long-time Perl contributor Randal Schwartz.