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FOSDEM - day 2
2018.02.07 21:08:03 CET
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Last Sunday was the second day of FOSDEM, but I only got down to
typing this post today. I participated in the key signing party and
spent my hours after the conference automating the job of signing,
exporting and mailing keys. After four hours I had an MVP, but found
out about Pius [1] which already had less bugs and more features than
mine, so I decided to use it.
Besides the key party, I spent most of the day in the Decentralized
Internet and Privacy devroom. I had to arrive early to find a seat,
about 1 hour before the first talk. Unfortunately I felt the devroom
could have been better organized, or maybe it's because it became
clear to me a Panel would have been the best thing to start the day.
A Panel about terminology and goal. The term "decentralized" was used
throughout the day, but with very different meanings. These are some
of the meanings used:
1. Network centric: more smaller AS'es, exchanging traffic in IXP's.
2. Federated: exchange of information between distinct systems.
3. Anti-trust: some companies are becoming too big and host too much
information.
4. Anti-capitalist: against any type of private enterprise.
5. Anarchist: against any type of hierarchical organization.
Unless the audience was paying attention, it was easy to become
confused as speakers did not state their definitions explicitly and
there were only a few moments when questions from the audience made
it clear there was a problem.
There was plenty of the usual propaganda, for example open-source and
free-software are not the same thing, but this is FOSDEM so I just
ignored it.
I was not impressed, but hope it will be better next year. I am
willing to help, but my opinion seems to go against what many of the
track organizers believe, so I'm not sure I'll be welcome.
[1] https://www.phildev.net/pius/