[Nottingham] BCS meeting report on Open Source

[Godfrey Nix]

Well, the first of the three meetings organised by the Nottingham and
Derby branch of the BCS (British Computer Society if you didn't know)
went off to a good start, if a little late.

The room was full with a goodly mixture of junior, senior, management
and consultant level staff from both private and public sectors, and
with quite a few who began the evening by knowing little of Open source
and ending the meeting interested/intrigued and perhaps a little
enthusiastic. I cannot say we made any new converts, but time will tell.

Yours truly was at the front, taking notes on a laptop running RedHat 9
and open office, with a little fluffy stuffed penguin on the next chair
(OK not Tux, but his cousin, perhaps!)

The meeting opened with the organiser giving a plug to our open day and
a nod in my direction for those interested, as well as quoting our LUG
website URL for more details.

Tim, the journalist speaker gave, I think a fair and balanced view of
the open source movement, being even handed in comments relating to
intellectual property concerns, security, cost of ownership, control and
the risks of forking, etc. But he finished in the question session at
the end by saying that the future in his view belonged to open source
(though he did not know how far off that was).

Next week's session at the Novotel (6.30pm Monday 13 October) will be a
presentation by IBM staff relating to their use of open source. Go
along, you might just get someone interested in linux!

Greetings

Godfrey Nix