I’ve long been lucky to have some of the key open source software conferences occurring in my home town, Portland, Oreg. While I was sad to see recently that the biggest Portland open source show of all, OSCON, was moving to the Bay Area, I was encouraged this week when the Linux Foundation announced LinuxCon, to be in Portland September 2009.

Given my longtime attendance of OSCON, the last couple of LinuxWorld conferences in San Francisco and the Linux Plumbers Conference I was at earlier this month, I believe we’re seeing some evolution of open source conferences, thus creating a need for a new type of show for what’s new. Since LinuxCon organizers seem to indicate a desire to draw not only Linux developers, but also users in an attempt to link them together with less regard for vendor representation or attendance, this might be just what the greater Linux community needs.

After attending OSCON this year, I was struck primarily by the increased significance and role of users and customers at the show, which had historically been more of a developer gathering that focused a lot more on code than on consumers of open source.

When this year’s LinuxWorld came around, much of the talk again was about the need or demand for a trade show about Linux, which by most standards is, well, standard in the enterprise. My blog about the subject, ‘LinuxWorld 2008-nobody cares’ was not about how Linux has become less significant, but rather how Linux and open source have become less conspicuous and increasingly just another option.

So LinuxWorld seems to have transformed to a large, mainstream IT conference (similar to its Mosconi twin-conference Next Generation Datacenter show that has been concurrent for the past two years). OSCON, meanwhile, is moving to a point and a location where it is likely to have more vendor involvement. Where will up-and-coming open source developers, savvy open source software users and those pushing Linux and open source in new directions have to go? Enter the Linux Plumbers Conference and LinuxCon, which if we’ve learned anything from open source software, enterprise adoption of it and the conferences thus far, should be different.