Debian Visits Microsoft - Enabling Digital Society - Site Home

Ian Murdock is going to visit Microsoft to give some presentations on Open Source projects. It is great to hear this kind of work. Here's a bit of information.

The Debian Project is widely considered one of the most successful and influential open source projects in the world: more than 1,000 volunteer programmers are currently involved in Debian development, and the formative document of the Open Source movement itself, the Open Source Definition, was originally a Debian position statement. In this talk, Ian will discuss the origins of Debian, paying particular attention to the importance of community and our use of an open development model. Ian will also provide an eyewitness account of the rise of Linux and open source beyond the Debian project, discuss its impact on the economic landscape, and explain why it doesn’t have to be a threat to Microsoft and its business model.

About the Speaker

Ian Murdock is Chief Technology Officer of the Linux Foundation (formed through the merger of OSDL and the Free Standards Group, where he was CTO) and Chair of the Linux Standard Base (LSB), the Linux platform interoperability standard. Prior to joining the Free Standards Group, Ian was cofounder, chairman and chief strategist of Progeny, a Linux distribution vendor that builds custom Linux platforms for companies building server appliances and other Linux powered products. A longtime Linux user, developer, and advocate, Ian founded the Debian project in 1993. Today, Debian is one of the most popular Linux distributions in the world, with millions of users worldwide. Ian was also a founding director of Linux International and the Open Source Initiative. Ian holds a BS in Computer Science from Purdue University.