Abstract of the presentation

Title: Open Source – Science or Religion?

Did the earth evolve around the Sun, or the Sun around the earth? Scientists and religious leaders were in disagreement regarding this. This was a major destabilising view that put fear into church; was this the end of their dominance? History has proven however, they didn’t have anything to worry about. But at the time, it was a major issue.With any good cult, you have your blind followers, your zealots, your doubters and those that will merely try it out to see if it suits their lifestyle. If you listen to some, you could be fooled into thinking this was the second coming of the software world, while others prophesize the end of commercial software as we know it, putting the fate of our industry into the hands of scruffy hackers who only work late at night.The truth however is somewhere in between. It is true that the software industry is going through somewhat of a Renaissance in terms of what we view as the commercial asset (or chargeable) component. Is Open Source the second coming? Or is there something more sinister afoot?This talk will look at the makeup of open source, dissecting every piece to see just what we mean when we say ‘open source’ and just who is actually looking at the source code. Our new cult is filled with many myths that are spreading in our circles and these myths if not addressed could misdirect the real power and beauty that open source has to offer.We will take a short history lesson charting some of the great open source projects, analysing why they are successful and will also look at some big failures of open source projects to see why they failed to capture the imagination of the populous. Is there a lesson to be learned here?The future of open source will be discussed and how, in our evolving eco-system, we can see that our new cult has a role to fill and doesn’t replace anything, but merely adds to the mix. Contrary to popular belief, the Computer Industry is not a trend setter, but a trend follower; other industries have gone through this same transition and survived. The problems facing companies today in our sector are problems that have had well trodden paths to their solutions.By the end of the talk, you can then decide for yourself, is open source a religion or has it matured to the lofty status of a recognized science?

Bio:

Alan Williamson is as much a veteran of the Java world as one can be with a language that is still very much finding its feet in the world. Alan has more than 15 years experience in the world of software development, graduating with full honors in computer science from the University of Paisley. He served on the original working group for Java Servlets that seen the birth of Java on the server side. His experience in developing high end enterprise applications is deep with credits including BlueDragon (a J2EE CFML engine) and Blog-City (one of the worlds largest blogging communities). His speciality is high-volume transaction websites. Alan has also worked his way up to the dizzy heights of editor-at-large of the world's largest Java magazine, Java Developer's Journal, in addition to being the founding editor of LinuxWorld magazine. Alan is presently working with SpikeSource, a new company dedicated to testing and certification of open source.