Simon Phipps

Short biography

Technology futurist Simon Phipps is a well-known computer industry insider and commentator and as well as having a widely-read weblog he speaks frequently at industry events on technology trends and futures. At various times he has programmed mainframes, Windows and on the Web. Currently the Chief Open Source Officer at Sun Microsystems, Inc., he was previously involved in OSI standards in the 80s, in the earliest commercial collaborative conferencing software in the early 90s, in introducing Java and XML to IBM and most recently with Sun's launching Sun's blogging site, blogs.sun.com. He lives in the UK, is based at Sun's Menlo Park campus in California and can be contacted via http://www.webmink.net.

The Third Wave of Open Source: Changing the Computer Market For Good

As companies like Sun Microsystems adjust their business strategies to fully embrace Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) as a customer-facing reality rather than just as a development methodology, it is clear we've entered a new phase with FOSS. This talk considers the emerging Adoption-Led approach to software entering the enterprise and reflects on the opportunities and challenges this creates.