Tim O'Reilly described a new web services API to the Safari online book service, along with Safari Unversity, which allows professors to build textbooks by grabbing individual chapters and then printing the book on demand.

r0ml's keynote on the Semasiology (science/history of the meanings of words) of Open Source was wide ranging and entertaining, and also addressed a very important issue - what is the meaning of the words "Open Source"? He pointed out that folks in the open source community talk a lot about what open means from the view point of licensing, but demonstrated some examples from accounting and horse breeding that suggest other means of what it is to be open. He performed a similar exercise in the notion of source code, using food (ending in a nice play on free beer) and music as examples. One thing that he said which I particularly liked is that one meaning of source is the originator of something. And that under this meaning, the source of code was the people, not code artifact. Quite thought provoking. I only wish that he hadn't run out of time. Nonetheless, what it means to be open source is very important, and an understanding of what that means affects lots of important discussions.

The other interesting talk that I went to was the IronPython talk, which was updated with the results of running parrot bench on IronPython. Jon Udell and Edd Dumbill have covered the talk in gory detail. I don't have much to add other than a favorable impression of the work that's been done so far. I've had a few interesting hallway conversations about CLR related topics.

Talks that I wish I had seen but didn't due to conflicts: Megan Conklin's power law talk, which got pre-empted by the open sourcing Java panel (This is also that last of these panels that I will go to. They just raise my blood pressure, and if things are still at this point by the next conference I go to, I think the issue will be moot, at least for me). Stefano's talk on Darwinian Software Evolution, which got pre-empted by Dan Gillmor's talk on Open Source Journalism.

Today's Chandler presentation and BOF went pretty well. The demo ran without a hitch, and people that I talked to seem to understand the ideas they were being shown, despite the ugly UI. People seem to be extraordinarily patient with us, and I hope that their patience will turn into active support and contribution once we get to a semi-usable state.