My personal highlights from FOSDEM24. Heavily skewed by what I saw (obviously) and what I chose to seek out. There was so much to see and do, I’ve undoubtedly missed many excellent things.

Talks⌗

Powerflexible cryptography with Python and Flightbox!⌗

Pascal Chambon FOSDEM page

Pascal’s talk progresses in stages, with each adding more detail and broadening the scope. It ends with a powerful, and worthy, conclusion where open source tools are being used to improve the safety of vulnerable people.

The story takes us through,

  • Clear, accessible descriptions of cryptographic methods (symmetric, asymmetric, etc.) using props (and a little bit of magic).
  • Encryption-based access control, where trusted individuals can jointly decrypt data based on predefined rules (using logical “and” and “or” operators). For example, “any three of five trusted people” or “John and one of Paul or Ringo”.
  • A Python implementation to be used as a library, CLI or mobile application.
  • Prototypes for devices build on off-the-shelf components, such as audio recorders, dashcams and handbag cameras.

The Witness Angel project is building open source tools to enable people to securely collect evidence of abuse while protecting privacy. I’m reminded of stories about hacked IoT devices or data loss from services where data is unnecessarily uploaded to a data centre.

Such a worthy project and some impressive progress. I would recommend reading their comic and website.

Daily blogging embedded Gecko development⌗

David Llewellyn-Jones FOSDEM page

I didn’t realise that my colleague David is migrating the Sailfish OS browser to a more recent version of Gecko, and live blogging his experience daily, on top of a full time job!

It is impressive work, especially as he had personally taken on this burden. I spoke with David afterwords about how the work of building, patching, integrating and testing third-party software is so important. This is the (probably underappreciated) work that, paid and volunteer, maintainers spend huge effort on to make sure our distros keep working.

David also reflected on the process of daily blogging for development and how it can help, and hinder, work.

There was also a great sense of support and community from Jolla/Sailfish OS and the broader FOSS on mobile community. A number of people who had been following David’s work, or even contributed were in the room.

Open Source in 2024: boundaries, burnout, business⌗

Mike McQuaid FOSDEM page

It was interesting to see Mike talk in Person. My knowledge of him was roughly “That HomeBrew guy who seems unnecessarily rude, but has some good ideas”.

It was a reminder to me how different people can seem in person and through text. Maybe we also treat people differently when we are not face to face? Someone who I thought was quite abrasive, and maybe a little extreme, I found to be an affable, charming person.

Mike shared lessons from his more-than-a-decade time as a FOSS contributor. Some personal reflections on how to treat yourself well, how to set boundaries, and the economics of open source (and how big organisations can profit from open source while contributing little).

Compliance as a Community Effort: Engaging Contributors and Users⌗

Alan Pope FOSDEM page

Strange learning that the voice you know from podcasts is attached to a human body. Popey spoke about open source compliance; our projects have many direct and indirect dependencies so how sure are we that how we distribute our projects meets the terms of the license? I imagine many of us would be surprised what we find upon taking a closer look.

There was practical advice on tools and services for compliance auditing, including FOSS tools that you can run in CI. Popey also reinforced that finding a compliance issue isn’t a cause for panic or Git archaeology in search of a person to blame. Reporting an issue is great, as long as it is done in a respectful manner, and we should be understanding that maintainers will need some space and time to fix things.

Gameboy Advance hacking for retrogamers⌗

Daniele Scasciafratte FOSDEM page

I have some skin in the game, having modded a GBA.

A photograph of a modified Game Boy Advance console. The console is in a yellow shell with red buttons. The screen is backlit and the title screen of the game Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones can be seen. At the bottom of the photograph a USB-C cable can be seen providing power to the console
My modded GBA
  • Rechargable battery (USB-C)
  • Backlit IPS screen
  • Replacement buttons
  • Replacement shoulder button switches
  • Replacement lens
  • Replacement shell

There was an overview of all the fun you can have hacking and modding the GameBoy Advance. From cosmetic changes to hardware mods, and memory editing to homebrew.

What was apparent here was how great the community was, and just how dedicated they were. A procedurally generated MMO game, Tenet on a GBA cart, and C++/Rust development tools are a few examples of their projects.

At the end of the talk, it turned out the maintainers of some projects mentioned were in the room. They welcomed everyone to join the GBA hacking community and get invovled. For me, it epitomised the sense of community at FOSDEM, someone was even taking pictures of the slides using a GameBoy Camera on their GBA!

The CarpentriesOffline: Teaching Foundational Data Science and Coding Skills with Little or no Internet Access⌗

Colin Sauze Jannetta Steyn Abhishek Dasgupta FOSDEM page

The CarpentriesOffline team, along with some excellent 3D printed accessories, took us through the adventure of delivering carpentries lessons where internet connectivity is slow or unreliable (or even just when wifi is down!). The solution is images for bootable USB and Raspberry Pi containing all you need to run lessons. With the image, the Pi acts as a Wife access point providing

  • Lesson text
  • Lesson data
  • PyPi and CRAN mirrors
  • Gitea
  • Etherpad

It is a great approach, comprehensive and deployable using cheap, off-the-shelf hardware. I’m tempted to see what time I can free to try and contribute.

Food⌗

  • Gaufres au chocolat
  • Gaufres aux bananes et chocolat
  • Beetroot burger with salsa
  • Mazette; soup, breads, beers and soft drinks all home made
Two people sat in a restaurant taking a self-portrait. On the table is fresh, handmade bread, soup and glasses of beer and cola. On the left is a man in his 30s with very short blonde hair, a beard and a light coloured top with blue-and-orange, horizontal stripes. On the right is a young woman, who is taking the picture, wearing a green coat, black hat and yellow neck-scarf. In the rear of the room, is a large pizza oven and brewing equipment
Anne and Me at Mazette

Drink⌗

  • I don’t drink alcohol but everyone who does seemed happy with the selection of Belgian beers.
  • I didn’t find where all of the Club-Mate was coming from until the end. I was too scared to try any, maybe that will be a goal for next year.
  • The water stand was great for me, and anyone who had reached their beer tolerance.

Stickers⌗

  • HPC.social; it is hard to beat a shiny dinosaur with sunglasses.