Bar Camp Denver Wrapup

As I have noted before I was an attendee at BarCamp Denver this weekend.

I led a 1pm session named something like: “I use open source stuff, how should I say thanks.” Those in attendance were Alex King, Dave Taylor, Devin Reams and many, many others.

The session went very well with some fantastic conversation on open source licensing, standards, and how to try to make sense of it all. In short, the licensing is a mess, but once you license something you cannot retract your code. It is out in the public, and as long as the users abide by the rules, there is not much you can do to get it back.

How do I say thanks? Well, I gave a donation to everyone that attended the session that had a tip cup on their website. That is a start. I need to contact the designers that I have used WordPress themes and send them an extra thank you, and a donation. They make my life easier (see the footer of this page) and I need to make sure the proper thanks are said.

I will remember the session from the points:
Be a good person, say thank you, the licenses are there to help but are hard to understand, open source can be free software but free software doesn’t have to be open source, and you are able to modify the code and use it (but not distribute it).

I am so glad that I heard about this event (thanks Joe!). I met some very, very cool people.

I am just finishing up writing a post entitled “The Emperor’s New Clothes” which was created shortly after my session, and it should be a great read (I hope).