110 lines
4.6 KiB
Markdown
110 lines
4.6 KiB
Markdown
---
|
|
title: FOSDEM
|
|
date: 2019-02-04
|
|
author: James McDonald
|
|
type: post
|
|
categories:
|
|
- Tech
|
|
draft: true
|
|
---
|
|
It's big. Really big. Just looking at the timetable is daunting, let alone choosing
|
|
which talks to attend.
|
|
|
|
People come to FOSDEM from everywhere. I don't think I've ever heard such a
|
|
wide selection of languages at the same place. It really brings home just how
|
|
big FOSS is, and how many people care about it.
|
|
|
|
# Venue
|
|
|
|
I've never been to Brussels before. If there's one regret about my FOSDEM trip,
|
|
it's that I didn't have more time to spend in this beautiful city full of fun,
|
|
friendly people. I would definitely recommend visiting with some time to spare;
|
|
I certainly will be again.
|
|
|
|
Also, the beer. Oh my, the beer.
|
|
|
|
FOSDEM itself is hosted by [Université Libre de Bruxelles
|
|
(ULB)](http://www.ulb.ac.be/). The event takes up a
|
|
[fair chunk](https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/rooms/) of the campus. This was again quite daunting, but the organisers
|
|
took a lot of effort to make it easy to navigate from place to place with a lot
|
|
of clear signage and timetable information.
|
|
|
|
PGDay (see below) was at the Marriott Grand Place, which was pretty much a
|
|
regular conference venue as far as the event was concerned. Free running coffee
|
|
and a chair is all I require. I can recommend their steak, though.
|
|
|
|
# Stands
|
|
|
|
There were many stands run by all the FOSS projects we know and love. The
|
|
stands were an odd experience compared to a "normal" conference.
|
|
|
|
Generally speaking at conferences you have a few big corporations and a bunch
|
|
of smaller companies. Everyone wants to sell you something you've never heard
|
|
of and get your details so they can send you <s>spam</s>marketing information.
|
|
|
|
Not at FOSDEM. Most of the time I found myself going up to these fantastic
|
|
projects like Debian, GitLab or Apache and the conversation was mostly limited
|
|
to "you guys are amazing, thanks for doing what you do".
|
|
|
|
# Talks
|
|
|
|
I managed to select a good few talks in the end. Sadly, some of them (looking at you,
|
|
[HTTP/3](https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/http3/)) were so popular they weren't possible to get in to. Luckily, all of them are recorded and available to view on [the FOSDEM site](https://fosdem.org/2019/).
|
|
|
|
Here's a sample of those I attended.
|
|
|
|
## [Java 4..12, Kotlin, Code Coverage and their best friend — bytecode: scandals, intrigues, investigations](https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/kotlin_code_coverage_bytecode/) --- Evgeny Mandrikov
|
|
|
|
A talk I really enjoyed that I selected largely at random. Evgeny Mandrikov,
|
|
works on [JaCoCo](https://www.jacoco.org/jacoco/). They build code coverage
|
|
information by looking inside Java class files which allows them to work with
|
|
multiple JVM languages. Unfortunately, it turns out that `javac` outputs code
|
|
that... isn't quite what you'd expect. It can also be extremely different for
|
|
the same code depending on the target JVM version. The talk had a series of
|
|
interesting examples of compiler output bytecode demonstrating these issues and
|
|
proving that when you're reverse engineering, sometimes you just have to make a
|
|
guess.
|
|
|
|
## What's New in PostgreSQL 11 - Magnus Hagander
|
|
|
|
My colleague Magnus presented what's new and magical in PostgreSQL 11.
|
|
|
|
## Netflix
|
|
|
|
This was a slightly disappointing talk. He focussed a lot on the advantages of working
|
|
closely with upstream FreeBSD and of publishing their improvements. That's all very
|
|
true, but it's an odd pitch to a room full of people at an open source conference.
|
|
|
|
There were some interesting details about the hardware Netflix use in their CDN
|
|
caches and the areas they have to focus on for performance.
|
|
|
|
## Matrix France
|
|
|
|
## [2019 - Fifty years of Unix and Linux advances](https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/keynote_fifty_years_unix/) --- Jon 'maddog' Hall
|
|
|
|
It was great to have an opportunity to see maddog talk. He was engaging and
|
|
enthusiastic as he talked about his experiences living through the turbulent
|
|
history of Unix and Linux. He ran out of time in the end, but luckily a riot
|
|
was prevented when he was allowed to finish.
|
|
|
|
# PGDay
|
|
|
|
I also attended the FOSDEM PGDay the day before the main event. This was a
|
|
great event in its own right, with several interesting talks.
|
|
|
|
I was particularly interested by a couple of the talks.
|
|
|
|
## Anonymisation
|
|
|
|
## Encryption
|
|
|
|
Also I got a fluffy Slonik.
|
|
|
|
# Thanks
|
|
|
|
I'd like to thank the fantastic people who take the time and effort to organise
|
|
this event. Having been marginally involved in running conventions, I've seen
|
|
how hard it can be to wrangle these things. And this event is *ridiculously huge*
|
|
(the statistics in the closing talk had us eating 200kg of waffles *alone*).
|
|
The effort involved must be herculean. So, yeah, thanks!
|