Open Source Conference, Toronto, 9-11 May 2004

by Randolph Metcalfe on 30 May 2004 , last updated 16 January 2006

Introduction

The Open Source Conference held at the University of Toronto 9-11 May 2004 was touted as the most comprehensive event of its kind ever held worldwide. Well, it was certainly ambitious. It was organized by the Knowledge Media Design Institute of the University of Toronto, but with a host of partner organizations and a lengthy list of sponsors that revealed a healthy curiosity within the Canadian academic and corporate environment to understand the phenomenon of open source and its development methodologies. Unfortunately, delegates still had to pay for their coffee each day!

I was delighted to be able to attend this event representing OSS Watch. The people I met there, the presentations made, and the surrounding discussions help situate the UK against the North American perspective. I would say that UK institutions of further and higher education compare favourably.

Presentations delivered at the conference and the video archive of the event will be available from the conference website from June 2004 (still available - July 2005).

Free/Libre and Open Source Software as a Social Movement

The first session of the conference set a high standard. Brian Behlendorf, co-founder and major contributor to the Apache Web Server Project, began with a bit history. He reflected upon a number of the more significant steps in the development of the movement, including the establishment of the Apache Foundation. This was scene-setting of the first order, and many of Brian’s anecdotes are already part of the folklore of the open source community.

Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, who initiated and led the FLOSS research project - perhaps the most significant study to date of the open source community, touched on some of the motivations of programmers contributing to open source projects. He also brought home the global dimensions of free and open source software. This is not merely a North American or European phenomenon. For a variety of reasons - the communicative possibilities presented by the Internet, the freedom to redistribute software which has an open source licence, and the financial imperatives associated with proprietary software - free and open source software has been making dramatic inroads into African countries, India and China. Rishab confirmed the growing suspicion amongst academics that this is a phenomenon worth serious scrutiny.

The final speaker in the opening session was also the most dramatic. Eben Moglen is Professor of Law and Legal History at Columbia Law School and General Counsel to the Free Software Foundation. This was a stirring speech, brilliantly presented, in which Professor Moglen associated the free software movement with other great movements of emancipation such as the civil rights movement in America. It would be difficult not to be moved by such talk, and this audience was certainly applauding with abandon by the time Eben reached his rousing conclusion. I was too - great stuff!

The Law and Politics of Open Source

It would take some doing to equal the morning session. But with David McGowan, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota, this conference reached a new plateau. From a professed standpoint of neutrality, he proceeded to analyse the language used by participants in the recent very public lawsuits between SCO and IBM. His conclusion, dramatically reached, was that both parties are engaged in a rhetorical battle, even moreso than a legal battle. By focusing upon the rhetoric, for example, used by Professor Moglen, David was able to stand that rhetoric on its head, problematizing it, and forcing the audience to return again to a (possibly) more grounded viewpoint. I suppose few who heard Eben Moglen’s talk in the morning would have thought it possible to so gentlemanly engage with it and critique it. This was a model of sensible academic legal discussion, I think, and Eben acknowledged as much by responding in kind in an impromptu follow-up to the afternoon’s set of talks.

Open Source Business Models

The second day of the conference concentrated upon business models and development methodologies. In the morning session, representatives from across the business spectrum gave brief insights into how money is made in the open source world. Most charming of these was Bob Young, a University of Toronto graduate and co-founder of Red Hat. Bob had a very straightforward approach to business models. Indeed he stated clearly that you don’t need a business model - what you need are customers. And if you have customers, you can sort out a business model later. He said that was what they did in setting up Red Hat.

Representatives from more traditional software companies such as Novell, or consultancy firms whose principal work is supporting open source software, had an equally frank assessment of the realities of business possibilities.

As ever at such events, there is usually a slot made available for the man from Microsoft. This conference was no exception. The lucky candidate this time was Jason Matusow, who bemoaned his fate. It is, however, useful to have Microsoft on the same platform with Novell or, as in OSS Watch’s inaugural conference, with IBM. It reminds us that although some corporates may temporarily have variable reputations, the corporate world is largely of a piece. The motivations that drive companies, even Bob Young’s apparently benign example of the fledgling days at Red Hat, are consistent.

The Technical Side of Open Source

This was the most technological session of the entire conference. There were useful examples here of proprietary software going open source, e.g. Eclipse, and the difficulties that can be encountered by traditional software engineers when they need to rethink their mode of operation. Equally fascinating was a talk by Brent Gorda, group lead for the Future Technologies group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Brent works in the area of supercomputing. The software they develop for use with the Lawrence laboratory is necessarily released with an open source licence as part of the conditions on their funding. This was a clear example of a way in which policy from a funding body both shapes and reflects the working practice within a funded community. Since it was always a common practice within the supercomputing community to share code, solutions to problems, and ideas for future development, the National Energy Council’s memo that mandated open source licensing was entirely uncontroversial. This probably is worth further study, especially for those interested in shaping policy within the UK.

The final session on the second day of the conference was a keynote address from Bob Young. Here Bob sought out possible connections between three significant events in his professional life: the founding of Red Hat, the establishment of The Center for the Public Domain, and his recent purchase of the Hamilton Tiger Cats (a team in the Canadian Football League - yes, it’s different than American football, sort of). Ultimately perhaps, the connection between these events is essentially biographical. The quest, however, for some form of unity in a life, throws him back on the philosophers such as Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill whom he read while a student at the University of Toronto. Well, yes, perhaps. The anecdotes, at least, were highly entertaining.

Education and Public Knowledge: Open Access, Open Content

The final morning of the conference saw participants divide between two strands, of which I chose this one. The session itself was an attempt to link open source to other open movements, in this case open access initiatives. With presentations ranging from Creative Commons to the Associate Director of Technologies at MIT Libraries, the discussion was lively and free-form, even if the bridge between open source and open access was never clearly crossed.

A final panel session in the afternoon allowed all participants to get an opportunity to ask questions of speakers from throughout the conference. It was a useful way to conclude an interesting and often thought provoking event. Was it indeed the most comprehensive event of its kind ever held worldwide? I hesitate to judge. It was, nonetheless, a worthwhile venture, and useful starting point for further developments in Canada.