Fox IT Symposium

Open source: Winners vs. losers

October 21, 2009
8:30am - 11:00am

Panelists

Matt Mullenweg, Founder, Automattic Inc.
Chris Fralic, Partner, First Round Capital
Shawn Dahlen, Program Manager, Lockheed Martin
Jonathan Markow, Executive Director, Jasig
Vijay Royyuru, Vice President, Technology, First Data Corporation

Moderator

Munir Mandviwalla, Temple University

Summary

The philosophical debates continue, the political positions for and against are now well known. The predictions of early demise or swift success were both wrong. Amid all these debates, an increasing number of new innovative applications are being released as open source and the business case seems much simpler today. Terms such as peer production, innovation, reliable, and high quality are now frequently associated with open source projects. In this symposium we will take a pragmatic perspective on open source concepts and tools. What can your firm do today? Should your next internal project leverage open source toolkits? Should you release your internally developed tool to the open source community? Should you deploy open source technologies? Are there really any cost savings? Is there an appropriate mix of approaches that can leverage the gains of open source without incurring the risk? What are the standout examples of today and tomorrow? What are the keys metrics of success and why do certain projects fail? The symposium will bring together a diverse panel of experts who will ensure that your organization does not miss the boat on this important topic. 

The symposium will engage the participants in an informal interactive manner to further discuss the above questions.