Short Report: Sheffield Seminar, 21st February 2002 =================================================== The Sheffield Seminar was a business-focussed event for the most part, arranged jointly between the Sheffield [GNU/]Linux User's Group (www.sheflug.co.uk) and Club UK Online, who are essentially an off-shoot of the DTi (www.clubukonline.co.uk). A few comments about the talks that were given, in rough order: + ICT Directory (Club UK Online) Club UK Online provided the first talk, about the ICT directory. The ICTD is essentially a business-to-business portal, which contains a vast array of information about local suppliers of services. CUKO is very much encouraging the local ICT (Information and Communications Technology ;) suppliers, and is attempting to get local businesses to realise that they can source services from local companies, rather than always having to use the 'names'. An example search through the ICT directory was shown, looking for "Linux" suppliers in "Sheffield". This brought up far more links than I expected, so it looks like this directory already has at least some relevance for Free Software users in the UK. It would be interesting to see if there has been, or could be, any collaboration between CUKO and the GNU Business Network, to not only expand the list of Free Software supporters and suppliers in the UK, but also perhaps to extend the search so that one can search on "Freeness" as well as location :-) + History of Linux (Roger Whittaker, SuSE UK) Although I missed some of Roger's talk, what I did see was a fairly standard presentation about the takeup of GNU/Linux, with particular reference to this country and some of the work that SuSE is doing. The OpenSource version of history was recounted, with a look at current developments (biased inevitably to the work that SuSE is taking part in; IBM machines, schools projects, etc.) + Free Software and Business (Georg C.F. Greve, FSF Europe) Georg's talk was slightly different to those that had preceded it, in that it was probably the most abstract: while CUKO and SuSE had shown practical demonstrations of equipment and web sites, Georg's talk on the commercial aspects of Free Software, and why freedom is a valuable asset, was less practically demonstrable in the period of time alloted. Georg first covered a little more fully the history of Free Software, in particular the founding and history of the GNU Project - taking delight in filling in many of the gaps left by others - and also covered a few of the common myths about Free Software and "Open Source". Leading onto the business benefits of Free Software, while some of the more philosophical aspects were lost many of the audience, the practical implications often resonated - such as the loss of freedom when tied to a single, monopolistic supplier - and this will have hopefully led many of the audience to look into the less tangible benefits of Free Software. + GNU/Linux and Small Business (Julian Old, Leeds Met University) Julian's take on GNU/Linux focussed very much on the cost implications of Free Software, and talked little about Free Software. This was the classic "total cost of ownership" argument, although he did occasionally mention the benefits of being able to access the source code, for example. The amount of information about Free Software in general was fairly limited (it was stated, for example, that "Many UNIXes have a lower cost than closed servers, and one of them is free - Linux" - although I'm paraphrasing here). However, the speaker was at least enthusiastic about Free Software (even though he didn't mention it specifically!) and I have no doubt that he will have stirred some into trying out GNU/Linux seriously. + SAMBA: Putting it All Together (Jeremy Allison) For many people trying out GNU/Linux for the first time in the small business environment, Samba is the "killer app" and is certainly driving much of the GNU/Linux server takeup in these situations. Jeremy's talk was centred mostly on how you can use Samba to replace the proprietary server systems commonly in use. This covered not only the fairly recent Samba 2.2 release, but the upcoming 3.0 release also, and gave attendees a good idea of the capabilities of these systems. In the past, this has meant some degree of dis-integration within legacy networks, but with many of the new developments in Samba - the DCE/RPC implementation, winbindd, etc. - Jeremy also showed that to run a hetrogenous network doesn't necessarily mean losing many of the integration features that are often used to make proprietary implementations seem attractive, and deter people from adding different systems. The Samba talk was also obviously reassuring for a number of attendees: one of the common criticisms of Free Software projects, and Samba in particular, is that they spend a lot of time playing catch-up to Microsoft, and that they will always be a generation behind the state-of-the-proprietary-art. Jeremy disproved most of this, by looking at the state of Samba 3.0 in CVS, which is already compatible with all the latest Windows releases and further extends the compatibility with systems already in use. + IBM Unfortunately, the speaker from IBM was unable to get to the seminar (even though many speakers had obviously travelled further!) but I'm sure it would have been interesting! --- Following Georg's talk was a short Q&A, which was reprised again at the end of the event. The initial Q&A was fairly useful, since it showed that many of the attendees had listened to the talk, and had some interesting questions and points of view. The final Q&A was somewhat more argumentative (due to the additional presence of one J. Allison ;), but at least was somewhat entertaining. The demonstrations at the seminar were also useful. UKLinux were out in force, and were not only demonstrating their ISP service (which was connecting the seminar to the 'net), but also select Free Software, like IPCop - a complete, easy to use firewalling solution based on GNU/Linux that impressed a number of attendees with the feature-complete yet simple implementation. CheapBytes sets of FreeBSD and Debian GNU/Linux were available, and a few of the people who bought sets and had their laptops with them were brave enough to actually try out the software there and then, making use of the number of expert users around to give helpful tips. In terms of AFFS, a lot of useful contacts were made between people who hadn't met before - the UK Linux magazine (small 'm' :) contingent were well represented, and the discussions we all had together expounding further on some of the conversations that have taken place on fsfe-uk, but were also very much focussed on the future, and the different directions AFFS will want to move. Discussing the prospect of AFFS with some of the visitors and ShefLUG members was interesting, and the general reaction was extremely positive, apart from the few people who were slightly unhappy because they weren't able to join there and then :-) Georg gave AFFS a quick plug at the end of his speech, with quite a few attendees scribbling down the web address, announcing that the AFFS had been formed, was active and very much open for business.