Whew! What a weekend it was at the Ohio LinuxFest in Columbus, Ohio! Between the free (but not Free) beer, having to choose between apparently popular sessions, and the wide variety of booths, the biggest problem was choosing which fun to have.

The appearance of some of the community's greatest minds and most popular people, combined with several popular speaking sessions, led to complaints of having to choose between great sessions. Well, that's a nice problem to have. The only real problem was that the number of registered attendees did not seem to match the size of the crowd. The OLF folks needed people to register so they could know how to plan for next year, and also for insurance purposes.

I arrived on the floor at around 8:30 AM, as folks were still setting up their booths. One of the first things I noticed was a vendor offering jobs. Unfortunately, I get paid about that to do my current full-time job - hardly worth uprooting for a move to Columbus. But it was cool to see vendors offering jobs! I saw the Linux Link Tech Show guys setting up, the Northeast Ohio Open Source Society getting ready for their live stream, and chatted briefly with some of the folks I had hung out with Friday night.

First up on the morning Keynote was Max Spevack, leader of the Fedora Project. He focused on how the Internet has impacted Free Software, telecommunications, sports, and even finance. He pointed out that "freedom is a feature", in that freedom offers choice. He pointed out how TurboGears offers freedom of choice in the SQL database and the development framework one chooses to use in developing web applications. He also suggested that society is rejecting DRM, both philosphically, and economically.

HP's Phil Robb talked about getting FOSS past the hell hounds down in Procurement, in terms of the licensing issues. All software has risks, he said, and the important thing is to understand those risks and how to mitigate them. He shared a story about a hardware device that HP was about to ship, but had to scrap due to the manufacturer's failure to adhere to the GNU GPL. You need to know whether the software you plan to distribute is in compliance and compatible with its dependencies.

John Maddog Hall spoke about the One Laptop Per Child Project, pointing out that people in Third World countries need the information that the OLPC laptops can provide. He pointed out that, while people need food, they also need to learn to provide their own food. OLPC is a way to teach people how to fish for themselves, so to speak. I only heard him for the first time last year, and I thought he did a great job of helping people understand the purpose of OLPC.

While I am not a developer, I decided it wouldn't hurt to learn a little about packing for the Debian system. Roberto Sánchez, an official Debian maintainer decided to help daring souls by making it a bit easier to figure out what they need to do to package software for Debian and its derivatives. He discussed the directory structure of a Debian repository, covered the steps maintainers need to take to get started, and ran through some screenshots showing how to build your Debian packages.

Drew Curtis, of Fark.com, led off the evening keynotes, and kept the audience laughing steadily as he shared some dubious jokes and pointed out how the media tend to pass off as news things that really aren't news. Particularly close to home were his mention of all the news about holiday traffic and bacteria. He also postulated that rags like the National Inquirer are so popular because most people really don't care all that much about the news.

I had never heard Bradley Kuhn speak before, and found him to be quite comfortable in front of the sizable audience. He really is a treat to listen to. He shared some of the history of Free Software, and even how he used Bogofilter to answer the SCO subpoena. But Kuhn also pointed out an important issue that the SCO case brings out. Because the GNU Project requires verification of authorship on all code, they had nothing to worry about, in terms of falling afoul of the SCO litigation. Every project should verify authorship for its own protection. I couldn't agree more.

As for yours truly, my Marketing FOSS presentation received fairly positive reviews, based on initial feedback. The most important criticism was that people would have liked to see some concrete examples of press releases and so forth, despite the limited time frame. In fact, the most vocal critics both suggested a longer speaking time would have allowed for better coverage. But the time has to be balanced against the overall scope of OLF. So now that I have everyone's attention, maybe I can follow up with some more concrete examples.

Then there was the after party. The Google-provided food was fantastic. While the Notacon folks ran the party show. And there was more free beer. If you paid the registration, you got the hard stuff, too. The music got mixed reviews, and that's a matter of taste. Some mentioned the possibility of throwing a LAN party next year as something that might get the crowd really involved. I tried to go up to bed sometime around midnight, but got grabbed up by the NOOSS folks, who were streaming live, and talking with Drew Curtis.

Stay tuned! There's more to report, and some pictures to put up.