Why Developers should look at the EclipseCon Business Track

Back in January I gave a quick overview of the business track at EclipseCon this year, and thanks to the never-ending tweaks to the website from people like Bjorn, there is now a summary view of the track available here.

Last time I was too chicken to single out any sessions, but having met some of the speakers over the past few weeks, I'm ready to go out on a bit of a limb.

I'm hoping hard core developers will consider some of the sessions on the business track. For example, Cliff Schmidt from Apache has a session on Intellectual property law that I've been fortunate to have a glimpse of. Cliff lays out the major OSS licenses in clear and simple terms, and breaks down the issues by categories so simple, even an MBA can understand :) I think developers will find it useful not only to understand some of the "license war" discussions that crop up on discussion forums, but also to have some ammo handy if someone tries to FUD your use of any particular OSS project.

Stephen O'Grady is going to talk about "Bottom Up Marketing". I think this is good session for any developer who works on an F/OSS project (regardless whether it's part of your 'job' or not). The message is going to resound with developers, I promise ;)

EclipseCon is just two weeks away, and reservations have exceeded last year already and continues strong. Thanks to moving to a bigger location, there are no worries of selling out (as happened the last two years). You can register and see more of what's going on here.

- Don