169 lines
8.1 KiB
Markdown
169 lines
8.1 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: First impressions of FOSDEM
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date: 2019-02-04
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author: James McDonald
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type: post
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categories:
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- Tech
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draft: true
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---
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It's big. Really big. Just looking at the timetable is daunting, let alone choosing
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which talks to attend.
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People come to FOSDEM from everywhere. I don't think I've ever heard such a
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wide selection of languages at the same place. It really brings home just how
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massive FOSS is, and how many people care about it.
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# Venue
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I've never been to Brussels before. If there's one regret about my FOSDEM trip,
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it's that I didn't have more time to spend in this beautiful city which appears
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to be full of fun, friendly people. I would definitely recommend visiting with
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some time to spare; I certainly will be again.
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Also, the beer. Oh my, the beer.
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FOSDEM itself is hosted by [Université Libre de Bruxelles
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(ULB)](http://www.ulb.ac.be/). The event takes up a [fair
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chunk](https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/rooms/) of the campus. This was again
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quite daunting, but the organisers took a lot of effort to make it easy to
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navigate from place to place with a lot of clear signage and timetable
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information.
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PGDay (see below) was at the Marriott Grand Place, which was pretty much a
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regular conference venue as far as the event was concerned. Free running coffee
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and a chair is all I require. I can recommend their steak, though.
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# Stands
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There were many stands run by all the FOSS projects we know and love. The
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stands were an odd experience compared to a "normal" conference.
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Generally at conferences you have a few big corporations and a bunch of smaller
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companies. Everyone wants to sell you something you've never heard of and get
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your details so they can send you <s>spam</s>marketing information.
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Not at FOSDEM. Most of the time I found myself going up to these fantastic
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projects like Debian, GitLab or Apache and the conversation was mostly limited
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to "you guys are amazing, thanks for doing what you do". It was a good chance
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to find out what teams were working on in the FOSS world. In some cases, like
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with Matrix for me, it was useful to be able to go and chat to them after
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seeing a talk about their project to get some more detail. The stands also
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provided the opportunity to donate to projects by buying a wide array of
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merchandise.
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I learned about a few projects I hadn't heard of too, like
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[PostGraphile](https://www.graphile.org/postgraphile/), an tool to create a
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GraphQL API pointing at your existing PostgreSQL database;
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[IsardVDI](https://isardvdi.readthedocs.io/en/latest/), a really neat tool to
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manage KVM virtual desktops targeted at classroom-type environments; and
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[Bazel](https://bazel.build/), a build tool to help you only run the tests you
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need to.
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# Talks
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I managed to select a good few talks in the end. Sadly, some of them (looking
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at you, [HTTP/3](https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/http3/)) were so
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popular they weren't possible to get in to. Luckily, all of them are recorded
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and available to view on [the FOSDEM site](https://fosdem.org/2019/).
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Here's a sample of those I attended. I recommend you follow the links and check
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out the videos yourself if you find them interesting.
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## [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
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A talk I really enjoyed that I selected largely at random. Evgeny Mandrikov,
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works on [JaCoCo](https://www.jacoco.org/jacoco/). They build code coverage
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information by looking inside Java class files which allows them to work with
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multiple JVM languages. Unfortunately, it turns out that `javac` outputs code
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that... isn't quite what you'd expect. It can also be extremely different for
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the same code depending on the target JVM version. The talk had a series of
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interesting examples of compiler output bytecode demonstrating these issues and
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proving that when you're reverse engineering, sometimes you just have to make a
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guess.
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## [What's new in PostgreSQL 11](https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/whats_new_in_postgresql_11/) --- Magnus Hagander
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My colleague Magnus presented what's new and magical in PostgreSQL 11. Some of the ones that interested me were:
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* RANGE BETWEEN, allowing you to operate on windows in your data in ranges based on any sortable data type
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* Stored procedures, making it much easier to migrate from... other database systems which one might encounter when you need to embed transactions inside your code
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* Logical replication of TRUNCATE, which was confusing by its absence
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And of course general improvements in performance, with better use of parallelism.
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If you're a PostgreSQL user I'd suggest checking the talk out yourself to get all the details.
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## [Netflix and FreeBSD](https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/netflix_freebsd/) --- Jonathan Looney
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This was a slightly disappointing talk. I was hoping for some information about
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the advantages of FreeBSD for this sort of work, but the talk focussed a lot on
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the advantages of working closely with upstream FreeBSD and of publishing
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Netflix's improvements. That's very true, but it's an odd pitch to a room full
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of people at an open source conference.
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There were some interesting details about the hardware Netflix use in their CDN
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caches and the areas they have to focus on for performance.
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## [Matrix in the French State](https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/matrix_french_state/) --- Matthew Hodgson
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The French government were looking for a new communication tool and landed on
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Matrix. This talk covered some of the design and deployment of this solution,
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and the challenges involved. He also talked about the feedback into the open
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source project and the improvements we can expect or access now.
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I found this talk enthralling, because I had reviewed Matrix for use as a
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corporate communications tool a couple of years ago when it was much more basic,
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and it was delightful to see how far they have come. Developments like easily
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verifiable end-to-end encryption in this sort of tool just sound marvellous.
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The improvements they have made in the development version of Riot bring it up
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to par with (dare I say better than?) the major players in this field.
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Definitely a project to keep an eye on.
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## [Introduction to the BASIC Engine](https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/basic_engine/) --- Ulrich Hecht
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Given that a Retrocomputing track existed, it would be rude not to attend. This
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talk about building a sub-€10 computer to run BASIC sounded like fun. And
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indeed it was! Ulrich Hecht talked about his motivations for building such a
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computer, the hardware he selected and what's involved in building the machine.
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He was specifically focussed on a machine that had good graphics and sound
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capabilities, which he demonstrated. It reminded me a lot of programming for
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the C64 or Amiga (the BASIC Engine has a blitter).
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## [2019 - Fifty years of Unix and Linux advances](https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/keynote_fifty_years_unix/) --- Jon 'maddog' Hall
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It was fantastic to have an opportunity to see Jon 'maddog' Hall talk in
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person. He was engaging and enthusiastic as he talked about his experiences
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living through the entire history of Unix and Linux. He ran out of time in the
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end, but luckily a riot was prevented when he was allowed to finish.
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There were various events and people marked with asterisks in the presentation
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to denote that given time in the pub, more stories would be available. I would
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dearly have enjoyed to hear those stories!
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I really can't capture his particular charm and humour here, so I strongly
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suggest you check out the talk yourself.
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# PGDay
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I also attended the FOSDEM PGDay the day before the main event. This was a
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great event in its own right, with several interesting talks.
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I was particularly interested by a couple of the talks.
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## Anonymisation
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## Encryption
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Also I got a fluffy Slonik.
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# Thanks
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I'd like to thank the fantastic people who take the time and effort to organise
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this event. Having been marginally involved in running conventions, I've seen
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how hard it can be to wrangle these things. And this event is *ridiculously
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huge* --- the statistics in the closing talk had us eating 200kg of waffles
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*alone*! The effort involved must be herculean. So, yeah, thanks!
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