Going to Fosdem 2010

FOSDEM, the Free and Open Source Software Developers' European MeetingIt’s finally there. The 10th edition of Fosdem.
For the people whom don’t know Fosdem (yet):It’s the finest free and non-commercial event where FOSS developers and communities can meet.There are a lot of interesting talks and demo’s, food, drinks, booths, and if you search good enough you might encounter a (real) girl.
And the best thing… it’s in Belgium :)Here’s a list of talks I’d like to attend

Saturday

  • 11:45 to 12:30 Evil On the Internet

    This talk will show you live examples of these sites, explain how they work, and tell you what we currently know about the criminals who operate them.
    There’s a lot of evil things on the Internet if you know where to look for them. Phishing websites collect banking credentials; mule recruitment websites entice people into money laundering; fake escrow sites defraud the winners of online auctions; fake banks hold the cash for fake African dictators; and there are even Ponzi scheme websites where (almost) everyone knows that they’re a scam. This talk will show you live examples of these sites, explain how they work, and tell you what we currently know about the criminals who operate them.

  • 13:15 to 13:45 Mozilla Europe

    General Introduction followed by an update on the work of Mozilla in Europe.

  • 13:45 to 14:00 Mozilla Foundation

    Latest MoFo news and projects.

  • 15:30 to 16:30 HTML5
  • 17:00 to 17:15 csync: Roaming Home Directories

    his talk will be about a file synchronizer designed for the normal user. I will tell you how it and works and how you can use it to synchronize your music collection or set it up for Roaming Home Directories.
    csync is a lightweight utility to synchronize files between two directories on a system or between multiple systems.
    It synchronizes bidirectionally and allows the user to keep two copies of files and directories in sync. csync uses widely adopted protocols, such as smb or sftp, so that there is no need for a server component. It is a user-level program which means you don’t need to be a superuser or administrator.
    Together with a Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM), the intent is to provide Roaming Home Directories for Linux.

  • 16:45 to 17:45 Mozilla Sync/Weave

    How Weave and in particular sync is going to integrate with Firefox through 2010 and Firefox 4.
    There will be some discussion on how add-on authors can integrate with Weave starting now, and directions being made to surface this data in the browser.

  • 18:00 to 18:15 SyncEvolution: From the SyncML Protocol to Free and Open Implementations

    Data synchronization is still mostly a missing piece in the free desktop puzzle: solutions that are reliable and ready for the mythical Average User just aren’t available. This talk presents the SyncML protocol, introduces the Synthesis SyncML engine (developed since 2000, open sourced 2009) and outlines how SyncEvolution is used as the synchronization solution in Moblin, GNOME and other Linux desktop systems – stay tuned for more news about this.
    SyncEvolution is meant to be a cross-platform solution, therefore this talk would be suitable for the cross-desktop developer room.
    Direct synchronization with other mobile devices is the main new feature in the upcoming Moblin 1.0 release. It will be covered in this talk for the first time.
    SyncEvolution is a tool that synchronizes personal information management (PIM) data like contacts, calenders, tasks, and memos using the SyncML information synchronization standard. SyncEvolution compiled for GNOME’s Evolution supports all of these data items. Compiled for Nokia 770/800/810 Internet Tablets, Mac OS X and the iPhone (only 0.7), it supports synchronizing the system address book. The command-line tool ‘syncevolution’ (compiled separately for each of these platforms) executes the synchronization. In addition, there is the GTK “sync-UI”. The external Genesis is a graphical frontend for SyncEvolution written in PyGTK. The GUIs make SyncEvolution accessible without having to use a command line and provides graphical feedback of transaction results.
    SyncEvolution was written to have a small, reliable solution for Evolution PIM data synchronization without reinventing the wheel. SyncML is the established industry standard and Funambol has kindly provided their source code under the GPL, so there was already an existing code base for client and server development. During SyncEvolution’s development special attention was paid to automated testing and coverage of corner cases of the SyncML, vCard and iCalendar standards to ensure that no data gets lost or mangled.
    The focus right now is to deliver the best possible SyncML client for Moblin and Linux. With the switch to the Synthesis SyncML Engine it will be easier to also implement a server mode and direct device-to-device synchronization – this is already working in the 1.0 alpha release.

  • 18:20 to 18:35 GeeXboX: An Introduction to Enna Media Center

    Enna is GeeXboX’s next generation Media Center interface, built upon Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL). It allows you to listen to your music files, watch your favorite movies, TV shows and photos across your network. It relies on libplayer multimedia A/V abstraction framework to control your preferred player and libvalhalla, a fast media scanner API that will grab metadata (covers, fan arts, song lyrics and so many more) from your multimedia contents.
    GeeXboX is a free embedded Linux distribution which aims at turning your computer into a so called HTPC (Home Theater PC) or Media Center. The GeeXboX project features both a LiveCD distribution and a standalone media center application (Enna); the project developed also several libraries (libplayer, libvalhalla) to enhance the multimedia experience under GNU/Linux.

Sunday

  • 11:00 to 11:45 Tor: Building, Growing, and Extending Online Anonymity

    A review and update on Tor, how open source solutions work well worldwide, where we’re headed, and where we need help from developers like you.
    Tor is a tool to protect your online privacy and anonymity. We rely on thousands of volunteers to run our network, review our code, and help enhance the experience for all.

I’m still not sure if I’ll make it for the Friday evening beer event.
It all depends on whether I find a place to stay for the night.
But I’ll be at the Ubuntu Dinner on Saturday evening!

Hope to see you there.

Interesting links:
Fosdem Homepage
Ubuntu @ Fosdem Wiki Page
Fosdem Mailinglist
Flickr Fosdem 2010 Pictures and foto’s
Press & Promotional material

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *