Bruce Perens @ BALUG February 19, 2008

Bruce Perens will be speaking at The Bay Area Linux Users Group (BALUG) on February 19th.

If you haven't been to BALUG in a while, this a great opportunity to check out what we're up to... and who knows you may just wind up eating dinner with Bruce Perens at your table. If you'd like to come, please RSVP:

RSVP@balug.org

Title:
"Innovation Goes Public"

Abstract:
Presented by Bruce Perens, co-founder of the Open Source Initiative in software.

Open Source provides much of the software infrastructure for many of the world's largest companies and organizations: Merrill Lynch, Google, Pixar, Amazon, the City of New York, and probably you - although you might not know it. Innovative products like Linux, Firefox, and Apache are the market-leaders in their sectors, but there are tens of thousands of Open Source programs, used for just about everything. But the economics of Open Source are non-intuitive: how can you make money by giving software away? Why did IBM de-emphasize AIX, after spending Billions, in favor of Linux, the product of a loose collaboration of programmers that it can never control? How can the world's greatest city trust Open Source to help manage its jails?

Bruce Perens will show how Open Source is often the most effective strategy for creating and utilizing new innovation. He will explain the economics of Open Source and how it works for profit-generating companies. His talk will be clear to beginners yet informative even for Open Source pros.

Upcoming 2008 speakers include:
Jan 15th - Eric S. Raymond
Feb 19th - Bruce Perens
March 24th - Mark Shuttleworth
April 15th - Eric Allman
May 20th - Jeremy Allison
June 16th - Andrew Morton
July 15th - Mike Linksvayer, CTO Creative Commons

...And with so many great speakers why not signup for BALUG's extremely low volume announce list:

http://lists.balug.org/listinfo.cgi/...unce-balug.org

Meeting Details
6:30pm
February 19th, 2008
Four Seas Restaurant
731 Grant Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94108

Parking:
http://www.portsmouthsquaregarage.com/

Cost: The meetings are always free, but dinner is $13

About BALUG:
BALUG is lively gathering of Linux users & free software enthusiasts that combines great food, community & intimate access to featured speakers. We meet in the bar of the Four Seas Restaurant from 6:30pm. At 7pm, we share a family-style Chinese dinner, which is followed by our guest speaker.

About Bruce Perens:
Bruce Perens is a leader in the Free Software and Open Source
community. He advises large corporations and several national
governments on Open Source policy. He is creator of the Open
Source Definition, the manifesto of the Open Source movement in
Software. Perens is a vice president at Sourcelabs, a
venture-funded company that provides Open Source services to Wall
Street. He is a visiting researcher at Agder University in
Norway, funded by a national grant. He was Hewlett-Packard's
first Senior Global Strategist for Linux and Open Source, and was
Senior Research Scientist for Open Source with George Washington
University's Cyber Security Policy Research Institute. The _Bruce
Perens' Open Source Series_ from Prentice Hall published 24
titles with Perens as series editor. Perens previously spent 20
years in the computer graphic animation industry, 12 of them at
Pixar Animation Studios. He has a credit on the films _A Bug's
Life_ and _Toy Story II_.

Official Website: http://www.balug.org/#Meetings%20(upcoming)