DebConf is the periodic meeting of people interested in contributing to Debian GNU/Linux.

This year DebConf was in Banja Luka, Bosnia/Herzegovina. The head organizer, Adnan Hodzic, had some very interesting comments in the aftermath, among them, this:

“I could write a whole novel about this, but to keep it as short as possible, for last two years as a side project I was working on an idea of Government or some of its institutions migrating to Linux. At first I was somewhat loud about it, then after Microsoft heard about it and after they tried stopping the idea by trying to scare me by trying to interfere with my private life; as that didnâ€™t work its lobbyist came even near of obstructing the whole conference within the Government. For the sake of the conference, I convinced the Government that by supporting DebConf it doesnâ€™t mean they need to move to Linux and publicly stopped talking about it. I also convinced them that our only goal was to have successful conference and promote alternative options and open ideas. I wasnâ€™t lying as I saw this as new opportunity of them concluding on their own why they should or shouldnâ€™t not move, the better conference was the more chances of success we had.

Thatâ€™s why I tried pushing as many representatives from various companies as in this case we would use reverse psychology where basically no one or few know what Linux or Debian for that matter is, but everybody knows who Google is, so if you have participants from i.e: Google or Austrian E-Health care system talking about how they are using your technology is better way to explain whatâ€™s it all about really. Eventually Microsoft even had their first ever conference in Bosnia/Herzegovina and you wanna take a wild guess where it was held? :-)”