I was struck by a number of thoughts during the recent FSOSS 2008 event at Seneca College in Toronto. First, one cannot attend an event like this without coming away feeling as though FOSS is totally mainstream these days. The four parallel sets of presentations running over the two days of FSOSS 2008 showed FOSS in many lights. As well as a number of talks about integrated development environments such as Eclipse or OpenKomodo, there were talks about the development of specific FOSS communities such as the Thunderbird community or the Fedora community. There were talks that connected FOSS to the realm of copyright advocacy in Canada and to innovative licensing frameworks such as Creative Commons. And there was an entire streak of discussion on Teaching Open Source, for indeed FOSS in a key component in a number of forward-thinking computer science and technology programs both at Seneca and elsewhere.

I think the fact that FOSS is not some kind of esoteric plaything is important, especially for typically conservative organisations like educational institutions. Choosing FOSS solutions these days is as common as apple pie, so to speak.

The second thought that struck me was how perfectly sensible FOSS in libraries fits in to this mix. That observation was supported by the response to a presentation on the FOSS ILS Evergreen by Dan Scott and John Fink. It fit right in to the programme. Of course librarians should be developing FOSS solutions for themselves. Why wouldn't they? Indeed it would be more surprising to learn that FOSS didn't have a significant role to play in libraries these days.

I will mention two further presentations that caught my eye. The first was an update report on a Mellon Foundation funded project based at the University of Toronto called Fluid. Technical Lead, Colin Clark, and Project Manager, Jess Mitchell, detailed a fascinating array of agile development techniques that support the widely distributed team working on Fluid. The energy and enthusiasm was palpable. And the outputs of Fluid - commonly used pieces of functionality that are thoroughly accessible designed with user-centred techniques which will be integrated into existing applications (e.g. Sakai, uPortal, Kuali, etc.) - will have a lasting impact on the interfaces we deal with in FOSS solutions deployed in educational environments.

The other talk that I will draw attention to is that from Andrew Ross of OSBootCamp. Andrew works for Ingres, an Ottawa-based open source database company. In an effort to help build knowledge and understanding of open source and some of the tools used to develop it, he started a series of relatively low-key mini-conferences. The response locally was startling and so the meme has spread. Through corporate sponsorship, OSBootCamp is able to provide organisational and (limited) financial support for others who wish to take up this dissemination model. There have now been OSBootCamp events in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and beyond. And this is only the first year of effort. Next year they hope to grow the model even more.  A positive story and something I think the eIFL-FOSS country coordinators may want to look to for inspiration and ideas.

All in all, FSOSS 2008 was an excellent event.