Berlin, 23. May 2012 – As of (today) Wednesday, the Berlin fair grounds are again, for four days, under the sign of Linux and Open Source. Under the slogan “Open minds create effective solutions” the 18. LinuxTag – Europes leading exhibition and conference in this field – unites exhibitors, professional visitors and congress participants from all around the world in Berlin. Until next Saturday, more than 10,000 visitors are expected.
The top-class conference program includes about 200 lectures. 187 experts from 17 countries and four continents are coming. Every third speaker is coming from abroad and about half of the lectures will be held in English.
The main topics include Android projects, enterprise storage with a special perspective on SSD-disk, as well as tools and methods of thy system management such as monitoring and configuration management.
In the exhibition of the LinuxTag 2012, 41 companies and 80 free projects are going to present their ideas, developments and products. Again, the proportion of foreign exhibitors is obvious. Thus, companies from, for example, France, Finland and Ireland are present at the LinuxTag 2012. Numerous projects, of the internationally networked Open Source projects, present their free software. Special events such as the Hacking-Contest, the Kernel-Kwestioning with many present Linux developers, the Key-Signing-Party, LPI-Exams and TYPO3-Certification and numerous workshops round up the program of the LinuxTag 2012.
“It is amazing what the community of developers, supporters and organisers have put together this year. The variety and quality of the proposed topics don’t even enthuse anymore. The LinuxTag is a prime example of how collaboration works in the Open Source community” said Nils Magnus, consultant for event coordination and program director of the LinuxTag association.
Keynotes about high-tech, community-work and civic participation
The keynote by Ulrich Drepper, maintainer of the GNU C Standard Library Glibc, is going to be about the concept of the transactional memory. He is going to report, for the first time in front of a big audience, about the changes in GCC 4.7 in terms of transactional memory and provides guidance for developers, how they can profitably use this technology.
Developed by a Norwegian company and subsequently acquired by Nokia, the UI-library Qt is now driven as an Open Source project under the concept Open Governance. In this respect the coming version Qt 5 is both, with respect to community participation, as well as technical challenges, a milestone and contains many fundamental changes. Lars Knoll, employee at Nokia and Chief Maintainer of the library, and Cornelius Schumacher, president of the KDE association, both engage themselves in it in their keynote.
Jimmy Schulz, chairman of the project group “interoperability, standards and Open Source” of the Commission of Inquiry about internet and digital society in the German Federal Parliament, is going to talk about digital participation, how parliaments and parties can win back their lost confidence in his keynote. In his opinion, one does not only revert to OS software, but also the methods of their development.
Strong performance of the free projects
The Open Source community is represented with 80 free projects at the LinuxTag. The range is impressive: represented are hardware and gadgets, system management, web technologies, software-developments, as well as desktop applications and distributions, numerous initiatives that are committed to free knowledge, free software and free work.
Open to new types of events
Open to new ideas means at the LinuxTag also being open to new types of events. There are even three this year: the business formats Open Minds Economy and open valley berlin as well as the RootCamp Berlin.
The Open Source Business Alliance stands behind the concept for Open Minds Economy. Its members make themselves strong for a sustainable value creation by open forms of the cooperation in industry, science and society. At the LinuxTag there will be a special track in the conference program. Its focus, are the topics education and digital school. In addition, the members of the OSB Alliance are going to present themselves at a joint stand at the exhibition.
In the context of open valley berlin, IT innovations and success stories “Made in Berlin” are going to be presented. The information about this business format is available in a lecture series and at the stands of the partners in the exhibition. In context of the open valley berlin, it becomes very clear why Berlin counts as the creative IT capital of Germany.
The RootCamp Berlin is the first thematic BarCamp for Linux/OSS users and administrators. ‘There are no spectators, as all participants have a say in the agenda of the BarCamp.
The LinuxTag has become more political
For the first time there will be a panel discussion about current issues of the network policy at the LinuxTag. The panel on Wednesday afternoon has an outstanding cast: This way three members of the Commission of Inquiry „Internet and digital society“ of the German Federal Government have accepted the invitation. The group of the members of the German Federal Government Dr Peter Tauber (CDU), Lars Klingbeil (SPD) and Jimmy Schulz (FDP) and the members of the House of Representatives of Berlin Stefan Gelbhaar (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) and Alexander Morlang (Piraten) is completed by power activist Markus Beckedahl. The discussion focusses on the role of Open Source and Linux in public facilities and the attitude of the parties. Apart from that, it will also be about how Open Source helps to freedom on the internet.
On Saturday, Philipp Brechler, of the Piratenfraktion in the House of Representatives in Berlin, is going to talk about the topic “How Open Source can help the policy”. The Piratenfraktion has decided to establish a budget for Open Source developments, to specifically promote and create Open Source projects. This starts with simple plugins for the CMS system and ends with completely new projects.
The Federal Government Commissioner for Information Technology, Cornelia Rogall-Grothe, has again taken over the patronage of the LinuxTag. “Free software, open standards and their importance for the administration, the German IT-industry, as well as for the small- and medium-sized companies are still a major concern to me”, the State Secretary of the Ministry for the Interior stated her opinion.
One of the most important pillars of the LinuxTag program is the Business- and Public Authorities-congress, what it has been for years. On the 23. and 24. May it is about Open Source software in the public sector, in the industry and in the business world. Thus, amongst others, the “OpenData-Portal Berlin” will be presented, reports a representative of the city of Treuchtlingen about “Ten years of Open Source in the communal administration” and a member of the City Council of Munich is going to answer the question “How is Linux becoming business-ready on the desktop?”
Education and training are top priority
Education and training will again be top priority at the 18. LinuxTag. Thus, workshops and beta-testing of the LPI Linux Essentials will be offered for the first time. The Academy-Day on the 26. May 2012 is aimed specifically at the IT offspring. This offer will be hosted by the Deutsche Informatik-Akademie. The lectures and workshops will mainly be about job requirements and training. On a large job wall free spots are offered by exhibitors.
On the 23. May the DAV-IT invites to a workshop about „Privacy Law“. The focus will be on legal problems of the order data processing, the data processing on behalf of another. The Friday is all about safety. The Security-Day in the Open Source Arena waits with more lectures on this subject. In the evening the final round of the hacking contest will take place on the stage and excitement is again guaranteed in hall 7.2b.
Graduate award and community support
In line with the opening ceremony of the LinuxTag 2012, the Univention graduate award will again be awarded. With this award, Univention promotes manufacturers of open IT infrastructure solutions for the enterprise us and the cloud, theses from universities, which accomplish a contribution to the further dispersion of Open Source software for professional users.
The Thomas-Krenn.AG is handing over a funding to the community project ubuntuusers.de on the occasion of the LinuxTag. The project is going to receive server hardware worth more than 2,500 Euros to renew their infrastructure. Project teams are encouraged to apply for funding. Every three months, a project for funding is selected by an independent group of four.
About the LinuxTag
The LinuxTag is Europe’s leading exhibition and conference on topics relating to Linux and Open Source. The four-day event has been taking place since 1996, annually on the Berlin fair grounds since 2007. It offers updates for professional users, decision makers, developers, beginners and the community. The LinuxTag association is the ideal host for the event and is doing so alongside with the Messe Berlin VLC. For more information please visit www.linuxtag.org/2012/en.html.