AlmaLinux is just one of many exhibitors that will be participating at Scale 22X, the first-of-the-year FOSS expo.
In the advent of the upcoming Southern California Linux Expo – Scale 22X for short – a wide range of free/open source software and hardware developers are heading to Southern California to promote their wares and services during the four-day event that starts Thursday at the Pasadena Convention Center.
Not the least of which will be AlmaLinux, which joins over 70 exhibitors at this year’s event.
AlmaLinux is an open-source, community-driven Linux distribution that fills the gap left by the discontinuation of CentOS as a downstream clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which made it a free to use drop-in replacement for Red Hat’s flagship Linux distro. Guided and built by the community, AlmaLinux is also binary compatible with RHEL.
As a standalone, completely free distro, AlmaLinux enjoys $1 million in annual sponsorship from CloudLinux — the company that founded it — and support from more than 25 other sponsors. Ongoing development efforts are governed by the members of the community through the nonprofit AlmaLinux OS Foundation.
Just as CentOS Stream — the repurposed version of CentOS that now sits upstream of RHEL — will continue to participate at Scale this year, so will AlmaLinux, according to benny Vasquez, the chair of the board of directors of the AlmaLinux OS Foundation.
“CentOS is a separate entity entirely and still participates in Scale and will be there this year,” Vasquez said. “We have been attending Scale for years as general community members, but now attend on behalf of AlmaLinux as well.”
While Vasquez can be considered a Scale veteran – having participated in the event five or six times – she said that this year would be AlmaLinux’s fourth year.
What’s in It for Open Source Projects?
Vasquez said that AlmaLinux, as well as the other exhibitors at Scale, benefit greatly from events like this.
“Scale, and the many Linux events around the world like it, are the perfect place for us to meet directly with our community, and spread the word about AlmaLinux,” Vasquez said. “We get to hear feedback from users about the things worrying them, and get to hear about the new things they’re excited about. We get to collaborate with the other users in the space, and get to learn about the newest stuff going on with the other projects we love, too.”
Not only will Vasquez be part of the AlmaLinux team in the booth at Scale, she is also presenting as well.
“I’ll be talking on Saturday about how folks can determine where to put their time, after they’ve decided they want to give back to open source in some way,” Vasquez said.
Her talk, entitled “Choose Your Benefactor: Common Good or Corporate Good,” will be held on Saturday, March 8, from 12:30 to 1:30 pm in Ballroom G. In this talk, Vasquez plans to give attendees a crash course on open source licensing, the differences and similarities in open source projects depending on who’s funding it, the different ways one can engage with the types of projects, and how to decide what type of project one wants to work on.
Vasquez has one tip for those attending Scale for the first time, and even if it’s not their first time, the same sentiment should still carry.
“If you attend, say ‘thank you’ to an organizer,” she said. “Managing an event as massive in scale and scope as Scale is – it takes an army, and I am incredibly grateful to the people who volunteer time putting the event together every year. I try to make sure I say thank you – and fail just as often – but it’s important that we recognize how much work it is.”
Doing Things at Scale 22X
The Southern California Linux Expo takes place from March 6-9 at the Pasadena Convention Center. Over 70 exhibitors and 280 speakers have been lined up for the four-day event, the largest all-volunteer Linux/FOSS event in North America.
Solomon Hykes, co-founder and CEO of Dagger.io, will be giving the Saturday keynote address on “Robots Building Robots” on March 8 at 10 am in Ballroom DE. Hykes was the co-founder of Docker, where he served for 10 years as CEO then CTO, and a founding member of the CNCF Technical Oversight Committee.
Sunday morning’s keynote will be given by Denver Gingerich on “What Happens When Hardware Puts Software Freedom First? We Built a Router to Find Out,” at 10 am March 9 in Ballroom DE. Gingerich is a software right-to-repair and standards activist who is currently Director of Compliance at Software Freedom Conservancy, where he enforces software right-to-repair licenses such as the GPL, and is also a director of the worker co-operative that runs JMP.chat, a FOSS phone number (texting/calling) service.
Scale’s keynotes wrap up on Sunday afternoon with Leslie Lamport at 3 pm on Sunday, March 9. A Turing Award winner and a pioneer in the field of distributed computing, Lamport will wrap up Scale discussing computing history, open source, and distributed systems.
Scale also hosts “conferences within a conference,” like Canonical’s Ubucon, DevOpDays LA, Kwaai Summit, Cloud Native Days, PlanetNix, Open Infra Days, Scale: The Next Generation (also known as Scale Youth), PostgreSQL @ Scale, SunSecCon (a security track), Open Source Career Day, and Birds of a Feather sessions.
There is also a beginners track at Scale where experienced Linux users will help new users get acquainted with Linux.
To find out more about this year’s Scale, visit the event’s website here. In you want to go, you can register here.
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