Asian open source summit postponed

Apache and Eclipse's first joint open-source conference, Open Source Software Summit (OSSummit) Asia, has been delayed till 2008, according to the event organizer.

The conference-cum-exhibition was originally scheduled to be held at the Le Meridian hotel in Hong Kong's Cyberport IT development zone between Nov. 26 and 30 this year.

A spokesperson for the organizers told ZDNet Asia in a statement that the date change "will allow for more time to plan" and "to allow Chinese nationals the time to gain access to Hong Kong".

The organizers could not be reached for further details by press time, but the reasons for the postponement seem unclear.

When contacted by ZDNet Asia, keynote speaker Li Gong, who is CEO of Mozilla Online, the China-based Mozilla subsidiary, said in an e-mail that he did not know why the event was postponed and he did not have visa issues.

Li said he heard the event might be "delayed for at least six months".

According to the organizers, little other than the date has changed. "All sponsors continue to be committed to the event, and the program will still follow the same format and themes with the same speakers," said the spokesperson.

When contacted by ZDNet Asia, Oracle, one of the sponsors of OSSummit Asia, declined comment on the postponement.

Although the organizers listed Red Hat as a sponsor, the software company has denied sponsoring the event.

The other sponsors listed are Google, Mozilla, Sun Microsystems, Sybase, IONA Technologies, Covalent Technologies, DevZuz, Morph Labs, Outblaze, SOPERA and Webtide.

OSSummit Asia has been positioned as "an exciting event with exchanges of ideas between all those involved in open source, including developers, vendors and users".