FOSDEM 2023 Notes

Keynotes

25 years of open source (keynote)

  • https://anniv.co/ - very cool history of open source, the one online seems to be a bit different than the one that was shown during the
  • 25 years of open source, before that history of free software
  • β€œAI/ML systems are requiring a huge amount of data this clashes with our thoughts on privacy
  • Hackers may not be able to create suitable systems if there is too much of a focus on regulating or limiting teh types of data they use
  • The researchers/acdaemic level… they are very aware of the ethical aspects of AI systems

Open source software at NASA

  • Page: https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/nasa/
  • Slides: https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/nasa/attachments/slides/5829/export/events/attachments/nasa/slides/5829/FOSEM_NASA_OSS.pdf
  • NASA Notes - part of policy since 1958
  • NASA Mission Directorates: ESDMD, SOMD, SMD, STMD, ARMD
  • Open Source contributions to NASA - 12k people contributed to dependencies that enabled NASA Mars mission (github/JPL)
  • James D Webb telescope - 27 years in the making: https://github.com/spacetelescope
  • "Nasa's open science guiding principles are centered in our Early Release Science work, supporting an inclusive, tranaprent, and collaborative ethos
  • Astopy Project: started in 2011 from astronomy/python mailing list
  • BG: PhD in astronomy, data management sytem for OSS, eventually role at NASA
  • Using and contributing to OSS
  • JPL SPICE Toolkit –> SpiceyPy (by Andrewannex)
  • By law, civil servants in the US can't produce anythign that is copyrightable. NASA created the NASA Open Source Agreement in 2003 to enable the release of software by civil servants (recognised by FSS)
  • NASA doesn't always engage well with the open source community
  • Security, Sustainability, Beaurocracy
  • Open Source Science in Practice
    • open the scientific process from start to finish
    • Broaden community involvement
    • Research data and software
    • Mission data and software
    • data should be released with creative commons zero
  • Sustaining open source software ($3mil so far): including numpy, sunpy, pandas
  • NASA's Transform to Open Science
  • Year of open science in 2023!
  • Earth Data: open access for open science
  • Earth System Observatory
  • "We need more we scientists than me scientists"

Open Research Dev Room

The under-equipped social scientist? Why do we need more dedicated, flexible and documented Python libraries for social sciences.

  • [ will add notes later - was tuned in on phone ]

Tackling disinformation using opensource software: The case of Qactus

PMMI

RICardo web application

CORTEXT platform

  • Slides: https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/openresearch_cortext/
  • Driven by social science researches and sustained by the develpment of a technical infrastructure & computational methods – talks about computational literacy with social science researchers
  • Really interesting to see this grouping of methods that includes: spatial analysis, knowledge dynamics, stochastic block models, SNA, NLP, scientometrics
  • Three ways of opening the platform fully
  • Interesting moment where they said 'open source in theory' vs 'open source in practice'
  • Challenges of producing FLOSS: lack of know-how, resources & prioriites, learning curve of open culture & tooling, FUD4evah

Interactive network visualizations as "guided close reading" devices for the social sciences: Development of the twitter-explorer

  • Page: https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/openresearch_twitter_explorer/
  • Sooo interesting to hear this given that Twitter just cancelled access to the free API.
  • Cycle in computational social science between: resarch questions, data collection, and analysis, which then changes the research questions… and so forth (iterative)
  • Ext + metadata -> interaction network -> 2D spatialisation
    • Forced layouts are good (esp with social science researchers)… they're quite straightforward to explain.
  • Interesting to see the need for creating an interface that folks who are non-programmers can collect/visualise data, with networks as an entry point. "guided close reading" + facilitating exploration of controversial issues.
    • Trying not to just look at the structural level, or just on the node level.
  • Interesting conversation/note during the presetation about how everyone retweeting one person can clutter a network graph, and how they
  • Demo'd example of "Red Flag laws"
  • Example of use of twtter explorer with fosdem: https://twitterexplorer.org/fosdem/
  • Questions:
    • How does the Twitter explorer work across languages?
    • Have you see a quality/quantity drop since Twitter was purchased by Elon Musk last year?

Webmapping and massive statistical data, a democratization story

Executable papers in the Humanities, or how did we land to the Journal of Digital History

  • Page: https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/openresearch_executable_papers/
  • "We must find a way of writing digital history that puts historical interpretation and argumentation at the center"
    • From: "A Braided Narrative for Digital History"
  • Interesting to see this multilayered approach: Narration, hermenuetic, data layer
  • Used JupyterNotebooks, mybinder,
  • Complicated relationship with Jupyternotebooks
  • Jupyter Notebooks for FAIR publishing?

Panel for Open research

  • How to bring in more natural scientists? Social science has been more & more of interest within the conference
  • "Form of things are in question" - can there be other forms of presentations at FOSDEM?
  • Speakers of tool-makers vs users of geospatial tools
  • Acceptance rate? ~50%
  • Can FOSDEM be added to the rotation of graduate student work?
  • Designers &

Learning From the Big Failures To Improve FOSS Advocacy and Adoption

How Are Big Companies Benefiting So Much from FOSS, and Individuals So Little?

  • https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/learning_to_improve/
  • Commercial resources are more than individual resources
  • Thought experiment: If every software developer in the world went on strike tomorrow - refusing to write another line of code that is proprietary, FOSS succeeds entirely overnight!
  • We were not aware of the power imbalance of free software and that it could be so successful!
  • Hobbyist culture - having leisure time and personal financial stability. Very difficult with a culture where people don't have such privileges.

Main room

How regulating software for the European market could impact FOSS

Security

Where does that code come from?

Git Checkout Authentication to the Rescue of Supply Chain Security

Lightning talks

Breaking the Code of Inclusion: Designing Micro Materials Based on PRIMM Principles for Accessible Programming Education

Open Source Good Governance – GGI Framework presentation & deployment

A quick introduction to the OSPO Alliance handbook and resources

Community Dev Room

Cultural Relativism: a Prism for Constructing Cross Cultural Communities

Contributor Experience 201: Supporting social infrastructure in FOSS projects

Building External Evangelists: What should be the primary goal of every community team

  • Schedule:
  • Slides:
  • Why are standards important? It's interesting to see the ways in which these standards are emphasiesed as a means to "bridging the connections between even the most competitive actors"
  • "Defacto standrads":
  • Combining open source with standards: speed adoption by providing usable code together with standards –> ensuring interoperability
  • Interesting to see/cite the Internet Engineering Task Force - " we reject kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code" - David Clark, Tao of the IETF. TCP/IP/DNS
  • Code related to drafts/standardisation
  • https://www.ietf.org/how/runningcode/hackathons/
  • Q: There is a really a link between open source. How did you develop the (chart of network automation)

h

Open Source design

Penpot official launch!: We made it! We're ready for our breaking moment!

  • Page: https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/track/open_source_design/
  • Open source, open standards, design software
  • [ photos to be added later ]
  • Open standards -> uses svg, with smart layouts
  • Code-first design layout -> css/flex layouts/developer first design system
  • Usually 1 designer for 10 developers
  • Q: Have a company design system/library with assets and designs.
    • A: If you are using a design system on Figma and want to use Penpot. Not sure if it makes sense. Unless you want to export them privately for you… Might save you money, but might not save time (only will buy 1 license for team)
  • Q: There was live update to the code. Is the reverse also possible?
    • A: Not for now… What comes next: Designers and developers changing a github repository (CICD).
  • Q: For groups interested in migrating from Figma, are there resources to help make migration easier?
    • A: Figma owns 80% of the market for designers. Adobe now owns 88% of the market. We have an export plugin.
  • Q: How do you plan to compete with Figma and be successful at it?
    • A: Big companies won't contribute with code/design, they will contribute for money. "Winner takes all" model currently. We hope we have a bottoms up distribution model.

Value driven design: A case study on a successful privacy by design project where we did everything wrong

  • Page: https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/value_driven_design/
  • Design challenge: "promoting agency with an open source ecosystem"
    • Digital open source exchange standard
    • Agency of end-users
  • 3 perspectives on privacy that are cuasing miscommunication
    • Theoretical: relational view on privacy centering around the choice of revealing or hiding info
    • End-user perspective: experience of privacy processes and interactions as encountered in information systems, products and services
  • End-users and developers: design principles –> privacy theory
  • User testing privacy: testing abstract principles is difficult -> came up with privacy game
  • Design principles for trust
    • Trust is an iterative process
    • Reciprocity in info exchange
    • Consistency in design and systems
  • Q: How did you choose to make the game for testing?
    • A: We tried lots of things,
  • Q: Privacy + Design thinking. How do you count GDPR?

Donation Page Design: Helping your users help you

  • Page: https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/donation_page_design/
  • Originally organised donations through the CERN open society foundation
  • Fixing donor pages: identify donors, don't interrupt your donors experience, shorten the click path, bring donations in-house, test test test, build the community (happens at every step)
  • Changing platform can increase engagement more than you think
  • "Meeting people where they are"
  • Build your community: support your upstream

Creative Freedom Summit Retrospective

Accessibility & Open Source: How open source is key to building a more inclusive world

A11y: EAA, WCAG, WAI, ARIA, WTF? – it’s for the people stupid! - The web is already accessible – it's us as developers who are including barriers. Let's make the web accessible together.

Building a UX Research Toolkit

Other talks: