FOSDEM 2009 - Saturday
Saturday February 7th 2009
We pretty much missed out on any Friday night activities at FOSDEM because our flight was over three hours late, We decided to head back to the hotel and sleep instead of meeting people at the pub.
I got up early and went to the hotel gym, I often mix conferences with being unhealthy so it was good to atleast get a workout in. Now to try and eat healthy. NO we failed that straight away by breakfasting on pastries and coffee.
* Opening - Apparently the drinking event is so we don't notice the net isn't working int he morning. The keynote talks are held in the Janson theatre which is huge, the room fills up as the opening goes on and energy builds. This years program says there are 5000 people, 1000 more than last years epected numbers.
* Free, Open, Future? by Mark Surman - A look through the last few years, how the web has changed how free software has changed. Then moving forward to the future, what does the future look like. What we need to look at to keep our future open. We need to win on multiple areas to move us forward - MOBILE - how do we get a decent market share of mobile? E.g. having a plan - Values, Freedom beyond the code, i.e. figuring out if a company is really open. Getting more people involved, everyone involved. And what can we do? ... Find an area you're interested in and push it forward e.g. Mark is passionate about getting open source information into education.
* Debian - Bdale Garbee. Suggests reading the Debian Social Contract a contract between the project and the contributors, as a suggestion for other Open Source projects to create the same. E.g. Defining goals, priorities, definitions. Bdale went through Debians history and pointed out what parts he thought were special and made Debian different over the years. A large proportion of the audience uses debian or some derivitive e.g. Ubuntu. Debian created a constitution to help resolve leadership issues, disputes etc. Uniquely it gives most powers to the developers itself. Bdale feels Values are the most important thing, more important than strategy. Values keep the project grounded, provide an anchor. Debian community is still strong and attracting contributors, not to mention the people involved in Ubuntu etc.
* Linux Defender - Kieth Bergelt - Open Invention Network - Organising to own patents to protect linux, dealing with Trolls early. They want to deal with existing patents. Really want to get the community involved to contribute to reject dodgy patents by providing evidence of prior art. Often open source projects exist but the information is not in a form that will stop patents be patented on this invention. Patents have their place but they do not belong in the OS community. What is needed is basically an anti-patent, defensive publications. These guys are focusing on mobile right now.
* SmallSister - email privacy solution This uses Tor sending your email encrypted including encrypting the headers through random computers to the end user. The strangest thing was the email address he ended up with that was made up to include part of his public key, not a great one for paper business cards, e cards maybe.
* FLOSS Metrix - Jesus M Gonzalez Barahona - This is a very cool project where they create metrix about open source projects. They hope to improve projects using information about the code, e.g. commits, bug tracking sys info, emails and documentation and info about processes. The idea is to learn and see changes over time and provide a way to quantify the quality of a project. The ultimate goal is to improve productivity and quality of each project, to see what works in general. There is an API to access the information on the way. There's going to be about 5000 projects analysed. http://www.flossmetrix.org/
* Bazaar - by Lenz Grimmer - Lenz wanted to offer up Bazaar as an option to move to a Decentralised Revision Control and AWAY from cvs/svn.- You get a full copy of the code with all the history, which means it's a whole backup, which is what makes it decentralised, there is no central canonical branch. BUT it can be made that way, you can use it with a central banch and use like cvs/svn. Infact the commands are easy too, you can use the svn / cvs ones and get going. There are plugins e.g. for those that like a gui. It's easy to create branches, easier to maintain, share code, merge. There is offline commits, very useful if working on your own on something before you join the groups code with the working version.
* Quick start into mobile development for desktop developers - Marcus Bauer - There's easier ways to get into embedded now. The old way with openmoko/scratchbox can take hours to set up. Hackable:1 is a project with debian on a micro SD card with everythign installed, the idea is to have a heap of SD cards each with it's own environment for each project. A last point was that they are focusing this project on ARM devices because of the low power consumption < 0.1W.
* An Introduction to BUG - Ken Gilmer - bug labs - This is a device, but not a phone, ARM, runs linux and all boots off an SD card. Then there's modules (atm 6-8) Touchscreen LCD, GPS, Wifi, IO, Sensors, GSP, Audio module, Acecelerometr, also a breakout to include other components. The target is for people who want to build their own devices their own modules, actually everyone who wants to get involved, not the typical embedded developer. E.g. if you need a geigger counter plus a camera but this device usually wouldn't be developed because the target market is more like 500 people. There are other modules in the pipe line.
I met so many people today as well as catching up with old friends. Notably I met (DragonBe) and friends at the PHP stand, we had some great conversations relating to our PHP User groups. We talked about the up coming PHP testfest and ideas for fund raising ideas for the user group and events. I saw some awesome stash with SQL on it, unfortunately it was all PostgreSQL, I used to use postgres, but I don't any more so don't want to wear a Tshirt or all the goodies they had, it was pretty sad. Worse still I went to visit the MySQL stand and it was basically a Sun enterprise crap stand, with open soloaris install cds and some brochures in Dutch... *sigh*.
Last night we grabbed a bus into the city and met up with our great friends from Barcelona. We ate out at a fantastic seafood restaurant, yep live lobsters in the tank and everything. I got the most amazing dish, king crab with a lemon cream sauce, it was lush, everyone raved about the food there. For main I had a pot of garlic mussels. We also had a delicious white wine, so great. Christian also brought us some sweet Colaborra stash, their great new tshirts, a mug and stress balls! It was a huge day, I needed a few squeezes of a stressball last night.
We finished off the evening having a couple of beers at the Gnome Party, there were stacks of people there and the barbar beer I had was delicious. Unfortunately it was the same bar as last time and again I found the location far too smokey. It wasn't long before we headed home. We decided to walk and saw some cool blue lit statues and great architecture on our adventure home. We took turns showing other something we thought was beautiful.
Originally published at Jaime\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s Blog.
We pretty much missed out on any Friday night activities at FOSDEM because our flight was over three hours late, We decided to head back to the hotel and sleep instead of meeting people at the pub.
I got up early and went to the hotel gym, I often mix conferences with being unhealthy so it was good to atleast get a workout in. Now to try and eat healthy. NO we failed that straight away by breakfasting on pastries and coffee.
* Opening - Apparently the drinking event is so we don't notice the net isn't working int he morning. The keynote talks are held in the Janson theatre which is huge, the room fills up as the opening goes on and energy builds. This years program says there are 5000 people, 1000 more than last years epected numbers.
* Free, Open, Future? by Mark Surman - A look through the last few years, how the web has changed how free software has changed. Then moving forward to the future, what does the future look like. What we need to look at to keep our future open. We need to win on multiple areas to move us forward - MOBILE - how do we get a decent market share of mobile? E.g. having a plan - Values, Freedom beyond the code, i.e. figuring out if a company is really open. Getting more people involved, everyone involved. And what can we do? ... Find an area you're interested in and push it forward e.g. Mark is passionate about getting open source information into education.
* Debian - Bdale Garbee. Suggests reading the Debian Social Contract a contract between the project and the contributors, as a suggestion for other Open Source projects to create the same. E.g. Defining goals, priorities, definitions. Bdale went through Debians history and pointed out what parts he thought were special and made Debian different over the years. A large proportion of the audience uses debian or some derivitive e.g. Ubuntu. Debian created a constitution to help resolve leadership issues, disputes etc. Uniquely it gives most powers to the developers itself. Bdale feels Values are the most important thing, more important than strategy. Values keep the project grounded, provide an anchor. Debian community is still strong and attracting contributors, not to mention the people involved in Ubuntu etc.
* Linux Defender - Kieth Bergelt - Open Invention Network - Organising to own patents to protect linux, dealing with Trolls early. They want to deal with existing patents. Really want to get the community involved to contribute to reject dodgy patents by providing evidence of prior art. Often open source projects exist but the information is not in a form that will stop patents be patented on this invention. Patents have their place but they do not belong in the OS community. What is needed is basically an anti-patent, defensive publications. These guys are focusing on mobile right now.
* SmallSister - email privacy solution This uses Tor sending your email encrypted including encrypting the headers through random computers to the end user. The strangest thing was the email address he ended up with that was made up to include part of his public key, not a great one for paper business cards, e cards maybe.
* FLOSS Metrix - Jesus M Gonzalez Barahona - This is a very cool project where they create metrix about open source projects. They hope to improve projects using information about the code, e.g. commits, bug tracking sys info, emails and documentation and info about processes. The idea is to learn and see changes over time and provide a way to quantify the quality of a project. The ultimate goal is to improve productivity and quality of each project, to see what works in general. There is an API to access the information on the way. There's going to be about 5000 projects analysed. http://www.flossmetrix.org/
* Bazaar - by Lenz Grimmer - Lenz wanted to offer up Bazaar as an option to move to a Decentralised Revision Control and AWAY from cvs/svn.- You get a full copy of the code with all the history, which means it's a whole backup, which is what makes it decentralised, there is no central canonical branch. BUT it can be made that way, you can use it with a central banch and use like cvs/svn. Infact the commands are easy too, you can use the svn / cvs ones and get going. There are plugins e.g. for those that like a gui. It's easy to create branches, easier to maintain, share code, merge. There is offline commits, very useful if working on your own on something before you join the groups code with the working version.
* Quick start into mobile development for desktop developers - Marcus Bauer - There's easier ways to get into embedded now. The old way with openmoko/scratchbox can take hours to set up. Hackable:1 is a project with debian on a micro SD card with everythign installed, the idea is to have a heap of SD cards each with it's own environment for each project. A last point was that they are focusing this project on ARM devices because of the low power consumption < 0.1W.
* An Introduction to BUG - Ken Gilmer - bug labs - This is a device, but not a phone, ARM, runs linux and all boots off an SD card. Then there's modules (atm 6-8) Touchscreen LCD, GPS, Wifi, IO, Sensors, GSP, Audio module, Acecelerometr, also a breakout to include other components. The target is for people who want to build their own devices their own modules, actually everyone who wants to get involved, not the typical embedded developer. E.g. if you need a geigger counter plus a camera but this device usually wouldn't be developed because the target market is more like 500 people. There are other modules in the pipe line.
I met so many people today as well as catching up with old friends. Notably I met (DragonBe) and friends at the PHP stand, we had some great conversations relating to our PHP User groups. We talked about the up coming PHP testfest and ideas for fund raising ideas for the user group and events. I saw some awesome stash with SQL on it, unfortunately it was all PostgreSQL, I used to use postgres, but I don't any more so don't want to wear a Tshirt or all the goodies they had, it was pretty sad. Worse still I went to visit the MySQL stand and it was basically a Sun enterprise crap stand, with open soloaris install cds and some brochures in Dutch... *sigh*.
Last night we grabbed a bus into the city and met up with our great friends from Barcelona. We ate out at a fantastic seafood restaurant, yep live lobsters in the tank and everything. I got the most amazing dish, king crab with a lemon cream sauce, it was lush, everyone raved about the food there. For main I had a pot of garlic mussels. We also had a delicious white wine, so great. Christian also brought us some sweet Colaborra stash, their great new tshirts, a mug and stress balls! It was a huge day, I needed a few squeezes of a stressball last night.
We finished off the evening having a couple of beers at the Gnome Party, there were stacks of people there and the barbar beer I had was delicious. Unfortunately it was the same bar as last time and again I found the location far too smokey. It wasn't long before we headed home. We decided to walk and saw some cool blue lit statues and great architecture on our adventure home. We took turns showing other something we thought was beautiful.
Originally published at Jaime\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s Blog.