Toronto's Seneca College is throwing an amazing-sounding free/open source software conference called FSOSS on Oct 26-27, to be held on the York University campus. They've done tons of outreach to local open source groups, and kept the admission down to $20 to ensure wide participation. A substantial number of senior Firefox developers will be there (if the schedule holds, they'll launch Firefox 2.0 from the event), and Mozilla is the big sponsor of the event. The speaker list is quite impressive as well: Chris Blizzard, Nat Friedman, Mike Shaver, Neil Deakin, Phil Schwan, Marcel Gangne, Marcus Bornfreund to name a few. Organizer Bob Boyczuk (also a talented sf writer) notes:
* We want to be inclusive; we've been working hard to reach out to the sundry OS groups in Toronto and get them involved – and to introduce them to one another. In fact, I've been working hard to attend all the pub nights the various groups hold!
* We want to provide a focus for people looking to plug into projects like OLPC, Firefox, and Linux, and into groups like Creative Commons.
* We want to bridge the gap between content people (artists, writers, etc.) and developers.
* We want to make people aware of the larger OS issues like licensing and DRM.
(Thanks, Bob!)
