[ghaff]

While the trigger was obvious, the way this came down makes one suspect that the in-person events were, if not on the chopping block, at least somewhat precarious. Remember also that it's not just OSCON; O'Reilly had a big slate of events.

(That a lot of people mostly equate OSCON with the O'Reilly events business is likely a symptom of the overall problem. This isn't a commentary on the quality of their events generally--which I've found to be pretty solid--but it does say something about the mindshare they have beyond OSCON.)

And, if I'm being honest, OSCON has gone from being almost a must go if you were in certain open source circles to something still mostly worth going to if you could find the time and budget. OSCON out-survived a lot of shows that were about open source overall but it's frankly a bit hard to be an event about open source in a general way when open source touches almost everything.

In any case, in spite of the special place a lot of people have for OSCON, it probably wasn't sustainable as a standalone event without the rest of the event slate.