Random documentation by Scott
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1 - Open Source
Stories and contributions from decades of open source involvement.
1.1 - Open Source Developers' Conference (OSDC)
Founding and history of the Open Source Developers’ Conference
The Open Source Developers’ Conference (OSDC) is a non-profit conference for developers of open source software. The conference was founded by Scott Penrose and first organised by members of the Melbourne Perl Mongers group in Melbourne, Australia in 2004. Originally it had been intended to be a YAPC-style (Perl) conference, but after discussions with the Melbourne PHP Users Group it was expanded to include PHP and Python talks. Following the 2004 conference success, Scott Penrose created the Open Source Developers’ Club Association to encourage programmers of other languages to also be involved in running the conference. At first this was an entirely Melbourne based organisation, but after the 2005 conference, it expanded to include members from elsewhere in Australia. At the end of 2006, control of running the conference for 2007 was given to a group in Brisbane, with the Open Source Developers’ Club Association committee members taking the role of overseers.
The conference is open to talks about software developed for any platform or operating system so long as the talk will be of interest to open source developers. Talks about closed source projects which used open source languages or open source projects which used close source languages are accepted. The majority of talks cover the Perl, Python and PHP programming languages; and the conference is usually broken up into these language streams. Talks on other languages such as Ruby, Java, Mono and C are also regularly featured, although in smaller numbers. Other talks may cover open source tools such as databases and revision control systems or meta-topics such as talk presentation hints, and working with others.
The OSDC idea has been taken up in Israel and Taiwan, where conferences began in 2006 and 2007 respectively.
History
| Year | Dates | City | Venue |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | 1-3 December | Melbourne | Monash University Caulfield campus |
| 2005 | 5-7 December | Melbourne | Monash University Caulfield campus |
| 2006 | 5-8 December | Melbourne | Monash University Caulfield campus |
| 2007 | 26-29 November | Brisbane | Royal on the Park Hotel |
| 2008 | 2-5 December | Sydney | Sydney Masonic Centre |
| 2009 | 25-27 November | Brisbane | Bardon Conference Center |
| 2010 | 24-26 November | Melbourne | Abbotsford Convent |
| 2011 | 14-18 November | Canberra | Australian National University |
| 2012 | 4-7 December | Sydney | University of Technology Sydney |
| 2013 | 21-21 October | Auckland, New Zealand | Langham Hotel |
| 2014 | 4-7 November | Gold Coast | Griffith University |
| 2015 | 27-29 October | Hobart | Wrest Point |
The first three years (2004-2006) were run by me in Melbourne. From 2007, control was handed to other groups around Australia and New Zealand.