The Linux Foundation travel fund

Linux Foundation Announces Open Source Developer Travel Fund

Funds will allow community's elite developers to attend technical  
conferences for collaboration; two grants already awarded


SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. May 1, 2007 — The Linux Foundation (LF), the  
nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux,  
today announced the formation of the LF Community Developer Travel  
Fund. This project stems from the recent formation of The Linux  
Foundation and its commitment to driving technical collaboration and  
support for the open source development community. The new initiative  
will provide funding to community developers to attend technical  
conferences, such as the upcoming Linux Foundation Collaboration  
Summit, where meaningful technical collaboration and development  
takes place. Community developers can apply at 
http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Travelfund. 

It is vitally important for community developers to attend technical  
conferences to enable face-to-face collaboration. While the open  
source community was built from online participation, there is still  
no substitute for face-to-face meetings, especially when planning or  
driving consensus. In fact, many of the important technical  
breakthroughs in open source history occurred during these  
conferences. Many open source developers, however, do not have access  
to funds to pay for travel to attend these conferences. The Linux  
Foundation has created the Community Developer Travel Fund for these  
developers to accelerate technical problem solving and collaboration  
in the open source community.

Sponsorships are open to elite community developers with a proven  
track record of open source development achievement and who don’t  
otherwise have access to funding for attending technical events.   
During the application process, applicants will need to point to  
their development achievements in key upstream Linux projects.  
Conferences covered by this fund include the LF Collaboration Summits  
held three times a year, the LF’s Japan Symposia, the Kernel Summit,  
Ottawa Linux Symposium, Linux.conf.au, desktop conferences such as  
Guadec and aKademy, and other technical conferences where true  
collaboration takes place. The Travel Fund does not offer  
sponsorships to trade shows or non-technical conferences.

The first Travel Fund recipients are Ed Trager, maintainer for  
Unifont.org, which provides information about Unicode fonts, Unicode- 
enabled software, internationalization, and Unicode usability issues  
on free/libre/open source (FLOSS) operating systems, and Jeff Waugh,  
a founding member of Canonical and a key GNOME community developer.  
Trager will travel to and attend the Text Layout Summit at aKademy  
with his LF grant. Waugh’s grant will be applied to his expenses for  
attending the Linux Foundation’s Collaboration Summit June 13 - 15,  
2007.


“This fund is for rock stars of the open source world,” said Jim  
Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. “This is not for  
someone who lurks on a mailing list. Getting a grant from this fund  
will be an honor reserved for those developers contributing the most  
to Linux and who have the greatest need for travel funds. The Linux  
Foundation wants to directly support these important developers. We  
think the Travel Fund is a good start to that support.”

The LF staff will review applications for the fund and make  
determinations with feedback from the Technical Advisory Board,  
technical workgroups and others as needed. Sponsorship awardees will  
also receive a t-shirt from the LF commemorating the grant.

To apply for a sponsorship please visit http://www.linux- 
foundation.org/en/Travelfund. The Linux Foundation urges potential  
applicants to read the criteria closely before submitting an  
application. Only elite open source developers attending technical  
conferences will be eligible for a sponsorship.

About the Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering  
the growth of Linux. Founded in 2007, the Linux Foundation sponsors  
the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and is supported by leading  
Linux and open source companies and developers from around the world.  
The Linux Foundation promotes, protects and standardizes Linux by  
providing unified resources and services needed for open source to  
successfully compete with closed platforms. For more information,  
please visit www.linux-foundation.org.

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