Exactly 17 years ago, on October 5, 1991, Linus Torvalds sent an email to the comp.os.minix newsgroup.

On August 21 this year, Royal Pingdom ran a report on Linux popularity around the world, based on Google searches. One of the interesting data points was that Utah had a higher than expected interest in open source. I had a chance to confirm that result a week later when attending the Utah Open Source Conference, held from August 28 through August 30 at the Salt Lake Community College, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

O'Reilly's annual OSCON event attracted a range of open source enthusiasts who were treated to impressive keynotes, a range of "lightening talks," and plenty of in-depth technical sessions.

Brian Proffitt, who joined the Linux Foundation as Community Manager in July, has announced a LinuxCon technical conference for his organization this coming year in Portland, Oregon

Open Source is emerging for the first time as a central theme at the CeBIT 2009 conference. Linux Magazine, together with the conference organizers and the Linux Foundation, is now encouraging Open Source projects to bid for free booths at the conference.

On September 24, 1&1 Internet celebrated the official opening of its US data center with a ribbon cutting ceremony – in Lenexa, Kansas.

The third and final day of the Linux Plumbers Conference, a conference designed by developers for developers, featured two final microconferences: one focused on Dbus Desktop Integration, and the other on Future Displays and Input Devices.

The second day of the Linux Plumbers Conference in Portland, Oregon began with an informative address by Jonathan Corbet of LWN.net. After Corbet talked about the challenge of sustaining such a high rate of kernel development (4-5 releases a year), attendees went on to face the biggest challenge of the day: choosing from the multitude of available sessions.