Financial Times

The Local Free and Open Source Software community backed by the Lanka Software Foundation is holding a day-long seminar on how businesses can take advantage of FOSS tools on August 18.

Sponsored by E-wis, HP, Informatics, Eureka and Google and supported by Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA), the conference will focus on how open source software can be utilized to enhance productivity with significant cost savings as well as freedom from vendor lock-ins.

"Sri Lankan software professionals have contributed to the development of open source through many initiatives and now Sri Lanka is recognized as a major global player in FOSS. It's time for Sri Lankan enterprises to embrace FOSS and drive their IT Strategy to be more cost effective." said Mano Sekaram, CEO of Eurocenter.

Titled "Opening the Door to Open Source", FOSS Enterprise will cover real world experiences, the legal aspects, including how FOSS can be incorporated within an organization, battling issues such as adoption, licensing and total cost of ownership. An international panel of renowned speakers will attend, including, Michael Tiemann, Vice President of Open Source Affairs Red Hat, Denese Cooper, board member of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and Ken Coar, vice-president and director of The Apache Software Foundation.

FOSS Enterprise is part of FOSSSL 2006, a highly technical and awareness building program of world class conferences, workshops and other events.