LinuxWorld to visit Hub for 1st time
LinuxWorld Conference & Expo will come to Boston for the first time in February, underscoring the area's standing as a hub for the open-source software being adopted by thousands of businesses.
Trade show producer IDG World Expo of Framingham said yesterday that next year's LinuxWorld event on the East Coast has been scheduled for Feb. 14-17 at the Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center. The show, highlighting the free computer software (and its penguin mascot) that has become an alternative to proprietary systems such as Microsoft's Windows, has alternated between San Francisco and New York since it was launched in 1999.
"We looked at the market, we looked at who's coming, and we looked at who's not coming," said David A. Korse, the president and chief executive of IDG World Expo. "We thought we would bring it to a place that was a center of open-source interest and adoption."
Korse said his company has already signed up more exhibitors for the Boston event than it had during this year's East Coast show at New York's Jacob Javits Convention Center. He said IDG expects 8,000 to 10,000 people to attend, including Linux application developers and managers of enterprises that have embraced Linux in their data centers and on their desktops. IDG has already reserved the Hynes for the 2006 show, and if attendance continues to grow, it may eventually move it to the new Boston Convention & Exposition Center, said Korse.
LinuxWorld is the third major IDG technology conference that will have its annual East Coast show in Boston, joining the Bio-IT World Conference & Expo and Macworld Conference & Expo. All three will be held at the Hynes next year, after IDG acknowledged this month that Macworld looks to be too small to fill the new convention center, where it was held on its return to Boston this summer.
Korse said the Boston area is a natural fit for LinuxWorld because it is home to leading vendors like Novell Inc., which recently moved its corporate headquarters to Waltham from Provo, Utah, and Red Hat Inc., which is based in Raleigh, N.C., but has designated its Westford site as a development hub. Both companies distribute Linux software and sell packaging, service, and support to companies.
Boston is also the intellectual capital of open-source software, in which the source code is freely available to the public for use and modification. It is the birthplace of the Free Software Foundation, which launched the movement two decades ago. Many university technologists favor open-source software, and area companies such as iRobot Corp. and Burlington Coat Factory will discuss their Linux use at LinuxWorld.
"This recognizes that Boston has emerged as a significant technology center in the open-source and Linux area," said Bruce Lowry, spokesman for Novell, whose chairman and chief executive, Jack Messman, will deliver the show's opening keynote address.
Novell has been building its business around the open-source model since it acquired Ximian Inc. of Boston, an open-source pioneer, in August 2003, and SUSE Linux AG of Germany, one of the top Linux distributors, in January 2004.
Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.
