Matt Asay, cofounder of the Open Source Business Conference, writes that he's "reclaiming the conference from the sponsors:"

This year, the Open Source Business Conference has made a conscious decision to seek less sponsorship money. Our goal is to deliver cutting-edge content on open source trends and how they affect the enterprise, both CIOs and vendors to those CIOs.

Our keynotes have been solicited based on their intelligence and insight, and not on their ability to pay. That's why we have Jonathan Schwartz (President and COO, Sun Microsystems), Marten Mickos (CEO, MySQL), Larry Lessig (Author, Free Culture and professor at Stanford Law School), Geoffrey Moore (author, "Crossing the Chasm"), and others keynoting. Others will be announced soon, including some high-profile speakers that will surprise many because of their seniority in the industry, among other reasons.

There will be no vendor pitches from the OSBC pulpit in 2005. We're reclaiming the conference from the sponsors. It will be more like DEMO or D or OSCON, and less like Linuxworld (vendor exhibition) or the various CIO conferences (which are really just glorified vendor pitches).

From IT Manager's Journal | Open Source Business Conference, 2005: What price integrity?
Referenced Tue Dec 21 2004 07:35:33 GMT-0700

This is partly in response to some criticism from me after last years conference. In all, I thought the conference was great and it looks like Matt is taking steps to capture some new energy and make it even better this year. If you're interested in how business can use and profit from open source, this is the conference to attend. You won't be disappointed.