FOSDEM 2016
I spent this past weekend (Jan 30–31) in Brussels for FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Developer European Meeting) at the Université Libré Bruxelles. Besides all the activity at FOSDEM itself with 5000+ attendants and 609 lectures there is always a lot happening before and after FOSDEM.
My activity started on the Friday afternoon with the FLOSS Community Metrics Meeting. The guys from Bitergia organise community metrics meetups since a few years now, also prior to OSCON, another open source conference more oriented on business. Metrics is an interesting topic and has gained a lot of attention in the community space. Besides quantitative analysis, the qualitative aspect is also pretty important, which was underscored in the many sessions.
Duane O’Brien’s session on InnerSource gave some comparisons on the use of collaborative processes in open source communities and in closed company environments.
InnerSource takes the lessons learned from developing open source software and applies them to the way companies develop software internally.
~http://paypal.github.io/InnerSourceCommons/
Zalando’s Lauri Apple talked about Catwatch, one of the many open source projects Zalando seemingly has. It was not something I expected from Zalando. In a recent article Lauri explains about ‘Zalando Tech’s New Open Source Principles’. Zalando’s tech department consists of guilds following a radical agility process. “Open source principles” encourages everyone to think in an “Open Source First” way.
FOSDEM does not have any entrance fee and thus the absence of high ticket prices brings many geeks, nerds and open source aficionados to Brussels. Some projects I work with in the OS arena bring all their developers and employees.
It is amazing to see how many folks join this event from all over the world accompanied by the usually dreary weather Belgium offers around this time of year. It is definitely not the weather that brings everyone to Bruxelles. The 600+ lectures, as FOSDEM appropriately calls them being at a university, vary in quality, but no complaining here with the huge choice in different sessions.
A lot of talks are very technical and not my forte, so to say. Being from the community space, working as community strategist with Age of Peers, the Legal and Policy devroom was the place to be. Licensing and patents were recurring topics, mixed with community topics. Bradley Kuhn and Tom Marble of Software Freedom Conservancy fame where in charge of this room.
Huge interest in the legal and policy topics led to the move to a bigger space on Sunday. The Sunday starting of with a Q&A with Richard Stallman.
There is a lot moving with patents and licensing in open source. Even though a lot seems to have improved regarding patents there is still a lot that needs to be dealt with. It almost seems that improvements in one area leads to a problems in another area. Deb Nicholson showed striking examples of silly patents that used to be granted and are now easily swept of the table. A question of common sense.
One of the sessions clearly showed how the battle on copyrights and patents is slowly being won and that trademarks is the area are focusing on now.
Ian Murdock
On a sad note, in this otherwise upbeat event, former leader of the Debian project, Martin Michlmayr, presented memories of Ian Murdock, founder of the Debian project. The Ian in Debian. Ian passed away in the end of 2015. A tribute video was shown in his honor with some words and pictures from members of the Debian community.
Ian helped pioneer the notion of a truly open project and community, embracing open design and open contribution; in fact the formative document of the open source movement itself (the Open Source Definition) was originally a Debian position statement.
Already back in 1994 Ian had a focus on community. Some of the quotes Martin presented truly showed Ian laid out the basis for community as we now know it in the the Free and Open Source movement.
