amcpherson's blog

From the New York Times:

WHAT a difference 16 years makes. Last month, the technology world was abuzz over an interview in Fortune magazine in which Bradford Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, accused users and developers of various free software products of patent infringement and demanded royalties. Indeed, in recent years, Mr. Smith has argued that patents are essential to technological breakthroughs in software.

The first ever Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit ended on Friday. I spent today de-compressing and summing up the highlights and accomplishments in a news release that will go out tomorrow. By my estimation (and most I’ve talked to), the LF Collaboration Summit was a great success.

Here’s the formula I used to make this determination: The right people + collaborating on the right projects +having a great time = success.

So I think you can all imagine that I don’t have much time for blogging, given the time requirements that organizing the LF Summit require. But I just wanted to say that so far this inagural meeting has been AMAZING.

I’ve been working with open source companies for about six years now, and very closely with Linux for the past four, and I have never see such a diverse and accomplished group of people gathered together. At the summit, we have (in the words of one very well known journalist I won’t name)

Last week Businessweek published an editorial we wrote responding to the Fortune article containing Microsoft’s patent threats. The reaction has been overwhelming. Some of the best articles below:

Charlie Babcock’s take on InfoWeek

Dana Blakenhorn says we’re letting it fly on his blog on ZDNET.

It’s been a hard week. First Bill Hilf, open source program manager at Microsoft (talk about a tough job), tells the world that “Linux doesn’t exist in 2007″ and that Linus has a job. (For the Linux Foundation no less. Can’t believe we didn’t keep that a secret.)

Monday morning started out well — a continuation of the sunny day we had Sunday, a few hours to concentrate on my actual work — until the phone rang. Microsoft had unleashed a FUD storm with more vague patent threats. While a few articles have been published with Linux Foundation statements, I wanted to elaborate on our public comments so far.

We have newly confirmed speakers and many great participants for the first ever LF Summit in June.

Confirmed speakers:

I’m very pleased to announce a new initiative here at the Linux Foundation: the LF Community Travel Fund

Noted standards attorney (and LF board member) Andy Updegrove has a very insightful and funny post on the recent Microsoft patent FUD.

Our member and distribution partner Xandros is the first to use our new distribution test kit as part of their certification to the LSB. You can read the release here.