The Linux Foundation — the not-for-profit that keeps Linus in keyboards, and most recently, has been looking to glam things up a bit — earlier this month provided a first glimpse into its plans for the 2009 Collaboration Summit, to be held April 8-10 in San Francisco.

Guest commentator Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of Ziff Davis Enterprise tells what, in his opinion, is important about the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit going on right now in Austin, Texas.

Last week, at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit held at the Googleplex, some of Linux's top kernel developers discussed the state of the Linux kernel today and where it might be going.

Each year, the Linux Foundation is responsible for putting on some of the biggest names of the conference season. LinuxCon, the Kernel and End-User Summits, the Linux Plumbers Conference — they all have the Foundation behind them. The next up on the schedule is the Collaboration Summit, and as of last week, attendees can now check the details on the Summit's who, what, where, and when.

The headline act, if you will, was announced this morning for the third annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, and it promises to be an interesting show: the Foundation's Jim Zemlin, Microsoft's Sam Ramji, and Sun's Ian Murdock, each giving their predictions on the future of operating system they represent - and, I expect, the others' as well.

Last week, more than 230 Linux leaders converged on Google's Mountain View, Calif. campus to discuss the most pressing issues for Linux, at the first-ever Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit. Today, the Linux Foundation released a statement summarizing the event's main accomplishments, and declared the event a success.

The Linux Foundation plans to hold an End User Collaboration Summit in New York City in October. The press release we received introducing the event said, "It's by invitation, but registration is free, in keeping with the idea of opening it to 'real' end users.

Collaboration is the soul of open source. At the Linux Foundation's annual Collaboration Summit in San Francisco, which ended last Friday, the organization unveiled new collaboration tools hosted on its website for forming and maintaining workgroups to tackle the problems that remain on Linux's horizon.

Linus Torvalds, Andrew Morton and eighty other important kernel developers are now debating how they plan to proceed with the future development of Linux at the Kernel Summit 2008 in Portland, Oregon.