Valentijn Sessink

co-founder and director Open Office

Netherlands

Abstract of the presentation

Over the last years we have seen a growing interest in open source and free software solutions. Both public and private sector seem to be more and more aware of the fact, that their IT infrastructure needs to “open” - which can mean anything: publicly accessible, without vendor lock-in, (partly) adhering to open standards or consisting of free or open source software. For some people, “free software” “open source” or is almost a religion.

However, it is our opinion that clinging to “free software” will bring you nowhere. In this session we will show, that for a healthy IT infrastructure, a less religious view on the matter is necessary.

Bio:

Valentijn Sessink is an active member of the Dutch open source movement since 1997, when he first installed Linux. He is co-founder and director of Open Office, an open source IT company. He founded two Linux-newsgroups, nl.comp.os.linux.discussie and nl.comp.os.linux.installatie, wrote documentation (the ALSA-HOWTO). His first customer running solely on Linux is a law office which was migrated in june, 1999. The importance of open standards and open information processing / open source software has been on his agenda ever since.

Events: Evolving standards

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