FOSS in Portland

No matter what happens with the server space, the cloud space, the stock market, or the latest round of startup IPOs, once a year there is always OSCON – O’Reilly Media’s great US West Coast celebration of open source technologies. Engineers, programmers, system administrators, and other FOSS enthusiasts gathered in Portland, Oregon, USA, on July 16-20 for this year’s event.

OSCON has outlived competitors like the LinuxWorld conference because it has always mixed commercial necessity with a genuine understanding of the authentic open source experience. Extra flourishes, like a 5K run and free lunches for expo visitors, added to the holistic ambiance. Some of the mega-vendors, such as Oracle and IBM, who loomed the largest at shows like this a few years ago, were still present but seemed to have a smaller footprint, leaving a more balanced mix of mid-range and still large (though less ostentatious) vendors who told new stories about cloud computing, big data, and tools for mbracing the mobile space.