“I’ve killed at least two Mac conferences. [...] by injecting Microsoft content into the conference, the conference got shut down. The guy who ran it said, why am I doing this?” –Microsoft's chief evangelist. So: Microsoft is trying to “kill” yet another event of its competitors by repelling attendees and changing the agenda in exchange for money

"...The adoption of the GPLv3 continues, over 300 packages are now using it. The 2007 Trophées du Libre awards are coming up soon. The FSF Europe published a new issue of their newsletter, full of interesting free software news from Europe. There was a minor GCC release, and the last new GCC release under the GPLv2 license.

A word of caution... from Microsoft .

ODF news from the past week, mostly positive this time around (no signs of sabotage from the Microsoft ecosystem)

Along with the Free and Open Source Developers European Meeting, the Open Source Business Conference was one of the two best conferences I've been to recently (I generally hate conferences). I got my geek on at: FOSDEM and actually enjoyed and learned from the technical sessions. Where OSBC is at the other end of the spectrum with business sessions, so I got my suit on.

Some people argue that if women really want to be involved in open source (or computing, or corporate management, etc.), they will put up with being stalked, leered at, and physically assaulted at conferences.

Next week's European antitrust ruling against Microsoft Corp (NasdaqGS:MSFT - News) is a legacy of its past behavior, but competitors say the company's current strategy is a sign of history repeating itself.

"Google has made a donation to assist FSFE's Freedom Task Force with delivering training courses, attending conferences and localising documents [...] «Free Software Foundation Europe has been working to promote and protect Free Software in Europe for many years and the Freedom Task Force is a good example of their long-term approach to supporting the community,» says Jeremy Allison, Member of the Technical Staff - Software Engineer, Google. «I believe that they are doing useful work and I'm proud to see Google supporting their activities.» ..."

Instead of ignoring open source conferences, Microsoft continues to invade them. The latest example: John Frederiksen (pictured), general manager of Microsoft’s Response Point business, is scheduled to speak at Digium AsteriskWorld on February 3. Why is Microsoft paying such close attention to an event for open source IP PBX advocates? The answer is obvious.