Father of Linux and all round geek-we’d-like-to-meet Linus Torvalds is billed to top the LinuxCon Japan agenda in Yokohama, Japan June 1-3. He will apparently use this platform to “share his thoughts on the 20th Anniversary of Linux” and discuss the open source road ahead.

This year’s conference will feature a dedicated day titled, “Open Forum: Power of Collaboration in Crisis,” which (so say the organisers) will aim to facilitate collaboration among open source project leaders.

But is open source collaboration in crisis then? That seems a bit strong doesn’t it?

The LinuxCon Japan keynote lineup also includes Patrick Meier of the Project Ushahidi, which provides open source software for information collection, visualisation and interactive mapping; Open Street Map’s Hiroshi Miura; James Bottomley, Linux SCSI subsystem maintainer and Distinguished Engineer at Novell; David Rusling, Chief Technology Officer at Linaro; and Dirk Hohndel, the Chief Open Source and Linux Techologist at Intel, who will share his latest insights on the Yocto Project.

“The Linux community understands the power of collaboration to accelerate technology that impacts both business and society. LinuxCon Japan can bring together community leadership to help address technology gaps left by the recent tragedy in Japan while advancing Linux,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation.

“We’re also looking forward to celebrating 20 years of Linux and hearing directly from Linus Torvalds about what this milestone means to him,” he added.