Richard Esplin at UTOSC 2009

Traditional technology businesses do not achieve optimal alignment between the interests of the developer, the business investor, the consumer, and the global community. Open source businesses attempt to improve on this situation, but unfortunately, most business models do not foster open source solutions. Technical expertise is expensive and awareness of the benefits of collaborative solutions is often lacking. Companies with significant technical know-how have many incentives to guard that know-how behind proprietary licenses. Companies who should be focused on their core competencies often have to build significant technical know-how to employ open source solutions.

There is a way that non-technical businesses can take advantage of the services of technical professionals without needing to worry about maximizing capital returns. This problem is similar to how a community can pool resources in a common investment fund and take advantage of banking experience (think credit unions), how a bunch of mountain climbers can take advantage of bulk procurement expertise to lower costs (think REI), and how a collection of rural municipalities can provide shared electricity and communications infrastructure (think rural utility providers). For the last two hundred years cooperative businesses have been refining a collection of operating models which encourage collaboration and sharing of resources. These principles apply to information technology solutions. In this presentation, I’ll share my research into cooperative business models, and my experience trying to catalyze a technology cooperative for educational institutions.

Since being indoctrinated in the philosophy of free software as a CS undergraduate, Richard has been a vocal free software evangelist. After trying a variety of open source business models, Richard thinks he has found an innovative solution to many of the common problems involved with making money building open solutions. By spreading the meme, he hopes to find the right partners for this endeavor.

Richard’s website is at <http://richard.esplins.org/>.

Video of the complete presentation is available on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzyaM7VWqOg

Stormy Peters at UTOSC 2009

One of the things about the free software community that continues to baffle those non-open source people is, “why do you do it?” Free software developers work on open source software for a number of reasons from scratching an itch to gaining a reputation to building a resume to contributing to a good cause. The interesting problem comes when money enters into the equation. Research shows that when someone works on something for free (for internal rewards) if you start paying them you replace those internal rewards. Then if you stop paying them, they will stop working on it. Does that hold true for open source software? Are commercial companies killing open source by paying people to work on it?

Stormy Peters currently works as the Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation. Stormy joined the GNOME Foundation from OpenLogic where she set up their OpenLogic Expert Community and helped Global 2000 companies develop open source software policies. Previously, Stormy worked at Hewlett-Packard (HP) where she founded and managed the Open Source Program Office that is responsible for HP’s open source strategy, policy and business practices. Stormy joined HP as a software engineer in the Unix Development Lab after graduating from Rice University with a B.A. in Computer Science. Stormy is an advisor for HFOSS, OpenSource World, IntraHealth Open and Open Source America, as well as founder and president of Kids on Computers, a nonprofit organization setting up computer labs in developing countries. Stormy is a frequent keynote speaker on business aspects of Open Source Software at major conferences such as the Open Source Business Conference and the O’Reilly conferences, as well as government organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union. Stormy is involved in GNOME and free source software because it is changing the world and the community is full of smart, passionate people!

Glenda Rhodes

This presentation discusses using GIMP as an alternative to Photoshop for editing digital photos. Basic GIMP techniques (black/white, sepia, cropping) and some advanced techniques (layer masks for selective coloring, head-swapping, background blurring) are covered.

Glenda says, “I have been on the outskirts of the open source community ever since my husband made me send out the initial release of Ubuntu in our Christmas cards back in 2004. Currently I help run Utah OpenTech, a company dedicated to helping small businesses implement VoIP using open source technologies. I am a frequent user of GIMP (on windows and ubuntu), using it for editing photos and most recently digital scrapbooking.”

Sorry this took so long, but here it is: Brandon Beattie’s much talked about MythTV presentation from the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference is now available for viewing online at OpenSourceTV.TV.

This presentation covers design, hardware, and software needed to build a Linux HTPC. Topics include what hardware works best in Linux, Distro flavors, available software, setup and using Linux multimedia. Software covered include MythTV, Xine, MPlayer, and VLC.

Brandon Beattie is a media and automation geek who has used Linux and OSS exclusively for over half of his life. He has worked on everything Linux from embedded systems to super clusters and has contributed to numerous OSS projects, local Linux groups and software standards. He is known locally for his media geekness, as a former president of SLLUG and internationally for his work with Linux Media projects including MythTV, developing the first HDTV support in Linux, and his large collection of Linux media howto’s. In his spare time he enjoys seeing sunlight and the lost geek art of socializing with non-geeks.

Stuart Jansen

The traditional Unix security model is simple and beautiful. For decades it has been good enough for most people. However, it is starting to show its age. In the highest security settings, a more fine grained control system is needed. In the past, this meant using expensive, complicated, special purpose versions of Unix: trusted systems. (Trusted Solaris, Trusted AIX, Trusted HP-UX)

SELinux, created by the NSA, is the most mature and complete response to the need for Trusted Linux systems. Unfortunately, because of the difficulty creating and maintaining trusted systems, their success has been limited. This is no longer acceptable.

Today, even desktop systems and cell phones need high quality security. Imagine being able to sandbox your Web browser and e-mail client. The
traditional Unix model makes this difficult and only partially possible. SELinux, on the other hand, makes fine grained security available to everyone.

When it first appeared, SELinux was hard to learn and mysterious to troubleshoot. As a result, many people fear it. However, SELinux and the tools to manage it have come a long way. It’s time to lay fear aside. Stuart will teach what SELinux is, why it is great, basic troubleshooting and maintenance.

Michael Place of UtahFM.org

Michael presented on Friday, 29 August 2008.

Aaron Bockover

Aaron presented on Friday morning, 29 August

We are continuing to produce videos of presentations from the conference, so stay tuned. Aaron Bockover’s presentation about the excellent Banshee media player is almost ready to go up to the site.