2010 Annual Debian Conference - World's Largest GNU/Linux Distribution Developers' Conference about to start

July 30th, 2010

The Debian Project, the team behind the free Debian GNU/Linux operating system, would like to invite you to participate in the upcoming Debian Conference which will take place from August 1 to 7, 2010, at New York City's Columbia University in cooperation with the Columbia Computer Science department. This year's conference is the first DebConf to be held in the United States in the 11-year history of the event. This year, more than 300 developers from all over the world, including Brazil, Argentina, Bosnia, Mexico, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Venezuela, and Latvia, will participate.

More information is available at https://debconf10.debconf.org/.

Every year, DebConf allows new and existing Debian project participants from around the world to assemble, share knowledge and ideas, make collaborative contributions to Debian, and build tighter community bonds. Conference costs are largely supported by corporate sponsors who find significant interest in supporting Debian and DebConfs.

For the first time, Debconf will host tracks, featuring a cluster of talks linked by a common theme. These include tracks on Science/Math, Java, Enterprise Systems, Debian Community Outreach, and Media and Art in Debian. Other talks will cover technical, licensing, and community issues by a host of Debian developers and other leaders in the Free Software community. Eben Moglen, Chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center and Professor of Law at Columbia University will be our plenary speaker on August 3, at 10:00 AM.

DebConf includes Debian Day, being held on August 1st, when the conference opens its doors to anyone interested in finding out more about Debian and Free Software. During this event, there will be a full day of talks on a variety of subjects such as Free Software advocacy, Free Software usability, and a number of talks on the Debian project and operating system itself. One of the hilights of this year's Debian Day will be the talk by the Honourable Gale Brewer, member of the New York City Council, on How Government can Foster Freedom in Technology at 04:00 PM.

More information on Debian Day, including a schedule, are available at http://www.debianday.org/.

Video Streams for most talks available

Similar to previous years, people unable to attend the conference will be able to participate by watching video streams and comment via IRC channels. More details about the video streams are available at https://debconf10.debconf.org. To comment on sessions, please join the irc channels #debconf-davis and #debconf-interschool respectively on irc.debian.org. The complete schedule of the conference is available in different formats at http://penta.debconf.org/dc10_schedule/index.en.html but please note, that new events and ad hoc sessions will be added during the conference.

About Debian

Debian is a free computer operating system. Over three thousand volunteers from all over the world work together to create and maintain Debian software. Translated into over 30 languages, and supporting a huge range of computer architectures, Debian calls itself the universal operating system and is the largest free software project in the world. In the United States, Debian is backed by Software in the Public Interest, Inc., a not-for-profit public charity as described in section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

About DebConf

DebConf is the Debian Project's developer conference. In addition to a full schedule of technical, social and policy talks, DebConf provides an opportunity for developers, contributors and other interested people to meet in person and work together more closely. It has taken place annually since 2000 in locations as varied as Canada, Finland, and Mexico. More information about DebConf is available from https://debconf.org/.

More Information

More information about DebConf10 can be found on the conference website at https://debconf10.debconf.org/ or by contacting the DebConf Global Press Team at press@debconf.org.