June 2006

Buying technology is inherently risky. When you purchase software you are entering into a futures contract with the supplier of that software. Open standards are the best solution to alleviate that risk. Customers understand this, vendors understand, government organizations understand this. Not surprisingly then, the word “open

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Ian Murdock, CTO of the FSG, will be speaking at Interop Moscow during the week of June 19. He will also be giving a plenary address at C3Expo in New York next week. You can read the press release below:

IAN MURDOCK TO DELIVER PLENARY SESSION AT C3

Paramus, New Jersey, March 7, 2006 — Paramus, New Jersey, March 7, 2006 – The second annual C3, the Corporate Channel and Computing Expo, today announced that Ian Murdock, chief technology officer of the Free Standards Group (FSG) will deliver a plenary session on Wednesday, June 28 at 11:30 a.m. C3 takes place from June 27 – 29, 2006 at Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City.

Murdock’s plenary, Open Source, Open Standards, and the Flat World will address Tom Friedman’s latest book The World is Flat – and how the economic playing field has been dramatically leveled over the past decade thanks to a confluence of new technologies and business practices — among them, the open source development model.

In his speech Murdock will provide an eyewitness account of the flattening of the world through the lens of the Debian project, one of the earliest organized open source software development projects. And looking forward, he will talk about the role of open standards as the glue that holds the flat world together, as well as the subtle but important difference between open standards and open source. Murdock will also explore what the new economic landscape means to global competition, both from the perspective of those threatened by it and those empowered by it for the very first time.

“Murdock brings unmatched experience building open source communities, driving technical consensus and solving Linux distribution challenges,

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If you’re interested in standards and consortia and you haven’t read Consortiuminfo.org, you’re missing the boat. Andy Updegrove, noted standards authority, FSG director and author of consortiuminfo.org, recently devoted an entire issue of his Consortium Standards Bulletin to the open source, open standards divide, and as part of that issue, he interviewed Jim and Ian on the FSG. It’s a great examination of the issues facing open source standardization and is available here.

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The Free Standards Group is currently contacting software developers for a survey on their Linux development efforts. The results of this survey will help the Free Standards Group standardize differences between Linux distributions and will improve the development/testing support services provided by the FSG. Your answers will ultimately make it easier for software developers to target the Linux platform.

This survey will only take a few moments of your time. Your feedback is crucial for the Linux Standard Base; without it, we can’t provide value to software developers. We know there are many demands on your time. But by answering this survey, you can ultimately save your organization development, testing and support resources and expand the market for your software.

You can take the survey here.

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