- FOSDEM - lists.fosdem.org

Lua DevRoom at FOSDEM 2016 - Call for Presentations
by Hisham Muhammad 01 Nov '15

01 Nov '15

Call For Presentations: Lua devroom at FOSDEM ======================================== FOSDEM [1] is the Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting, conference happening every year in Brussels, Belgium over a weekend. This year it will be on January 30-31. It's the biggest FOSS event in Europe with +5000 participants, +400 speakers. In 2015 we had an impromptu Birds of a Feather meeting for the Lua community there. In 2016 we will have a real developer room, on the afternoon of Saturday 30th January, so we are now accepting submissions of talk proposals. The format will be 30 minutes talks, including questions (so roughly 20-25 talks, 5-10 minutes for Q&A). Feel free to ask if you'd like to have a longer or a shorter slot. The talks will be filmed, possibly streamed live, and the videos will be made available publicly under a CC-BY license. Submitting a talk for the devroom implies that you agree to be filmed under such terms. All topics related to Lua are accepted. The deadline for submission is Tuesday 1st December 2015. All submission should be made using the FOSDEM even planning tool Pentabarf [2]. When you create your event, make sure to select "Lua devroom" under "Track". If you already have a Pentabarf account from a previous year, please reuse it instead of creating a new one. In the morning, this room will be used by the GNU Guile [3] community. We are considering sharing one hour around lunch time for talks that may interest both communities. So if you have an idea for such a talk, do not hesitate to submit it! There is a mailing-list for the devroom, to which you can subscribe at [4] (subscriptions have to be accepted by an admin so you will not receive the confirmation email immediatly). If you have any questions, you can contact the devroom organizers by email: Hisham Muhammad : h [at] hisham [dot] hm Pierre Chapuis : catwell [at] archlinux [dot] us Important dates summary: Submission deadline: 1st December 2015 Acceptance notifications: 8th December 2015 Final schedule announcement: 17th December 2015 Devroom: 30th January 2016 (afternoon) Feel free to forward this CFP to any person or group you know that could be interested! See you at FOSDEM! [1] https://fosdem.org [2] https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM16 [3] http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/ [4] https://lists.fosdem.org/admin/lua-devroom

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[ANN] FOSDEM'16 HPC, Big Data, and Data Science Devroom Call for Participation
by Ewan Higgs 01 Nov '15

01 Nov '15

FOSDEM'16 HPC, Big Data, and Data Science Devroom Call for Participation Sunday, January 31, 2016, Brussels, Belgium Also available here: <https://hpc-bigdata-fosdem16.github.io/> # Overview We are proud to announce the 1st edition of the HPC, Big Data and Data Science devroom, co-located with FOSDEM 2016. FOSDEM is an annual conference about free and open source software, attended by over 5000 developers and open-source enthusiasts from all over the world. FOSDEM has hosted an HPC devroom before, but this is the first time that representatives from the HPC and Big Data communities are joining forces to bring both communities together with this devroom. High Performance Computing (HPC) and Big Data are two important approaches to scientific computing. HPC typically deals with smaller, highly structured data sets and huge amounts of computation while Big Data, not surprisingly, deals with gigantic, unstructured data sets and focuses on the I/O bottlenecks. With the Big Data trend unlocking access to an unprecedented amount of data, Data Science has emerged to tackle the problem of creating processes and approaches to extracting knowledge or insights from these data sets. Machine learning and predictive analytics algorithms have joined the family of more traditional HPC algorithms and are pushing the requirements of cluster and data scalability. Free and Open Source communities have been the foundation of the HPC and Big Data communities for some time. In the HPC community, it should be no surprise that 488 of the Top500 supercomputers in the world run Linux. On the Big Data side, the Hadoop ecosystem has had a tremendous amount of Open Source contributions from a wide range of organizations coming together under the Apache Software Foundation. Our goal is to bring the communities together, share expertise, learn how we can benefit from each other’s work and foster further joint research and collaboration. We welcome talks about Free and Open Source solutions to the challenges presented by large scale computing, data management and data analysis. The devroom will take place on Sunday, January 31st 2016, at ULB (Campus Solbosch), in Brussels, Belgium. Join us to enjoy a full day of talks, demos and interesting discussions on open-source HPC, Big Data and Data Science. Sounds interesting? Submit your talk proposal below and see you in Brussels! # Topics Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Architecture and design of High Performance Computing (HPC) and Big Data systems Architecture and design of Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) and data acquisition pipelines Data security and governance Tools and technologies related to HPC and computational science, for example: Multithreading (OpenMP, etc.) Distributed computing (MPI, etc.) GPGPU computing (OpenCL, OpenACC, etc.) Parallel filesystems and storage Large-scale performance analysis and debugging Computational paradigms for Big Data systems MapReduce engines Streaming engines SQL engines Dataflow engines Emerging hardware trends of large scale clusters Large scale memory pooling High-speed interconnects ARM cluster architecture System administration of HPC and Big Data clusters User support tools Machine learning libraries and tools Scientific software applications, tools and libraries (across all scientific domains) Big Data platforms, extensions to existing systems, libraries, APIs Experiences reports on using Big Data systems, for example: Large-scale deployments Development and configuration issues Tuning and performance tips and lessons learned Interesting Big Data use-cases and applications Comparative analysis of existing systems, evaluation results, performance studies Interdisciplinary HPC/Big Data use-cases, for example: Applications using both HPC and Big Data technologies Integration issues Open research problems on the convergence of HPC and Big Data Running MPI jobs on Big Data clusters and vice-versa # Submission We invite presenters to submit talk proposals to present high-quality work with sufficient background material to be clear to the HPC, Big Data, and/or Data Science communities. Talks proposals should be submitted through the FOSDEM Pentabarf server. Submissions must include: Abstract Session type Session length Expected prior knowledge / intended audience Speaker bio Links to code / slides / material for the talk (optional) Links to previous talks by the speaker Our intention is to have a full day of talks of about 20 minutes each, with an additional 5 minutes for questions by attendees. We would also like to note: Talks will be streamed live and will be recorded. By submitting a session, speakers agree to being recorded and having their talk made available. All accepted talks will be about (using) free and open source software. We highly discourage “marketing” talks. Submit here: <https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM16> When submitting your talk in Pentabarf, make sure to select the ‘HPC, Big Data, and Data Science Devroom’ as the ‘Track’. If you already have a Pentabarf account from a previous FOSDEM edition, please reuse it. Create an account if, and only if, you don’t have one from a previous year. If you have any issues with Pentabarf, do not despair: contact hpc-bigdata-devroom [at] lists.fosdem.org . Dates Call for parcipation available: November 2, 2015 Call for participation closes: December 4, 2015 Devroom schedule available: December 18, 2015 Devroom dinner: Saturday January 30, 2016 (subject to change) Devroom date: Sunday January 31, 2016 # Organizers Ewan Higgs - HPC team at Ghent University Kenneth Hoste - HPC team at Ghent University Roman Shaposhnik - Pivotal Vasia Kalavri - KTH Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) We adopt the Apache Code of Conduct. <http://www.apache.org/foundation/policies/conduct.html> Please email hpc-bigdata-devroom(a)lists.fosdem.org with questions or concerns.

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Embedded, mobile and automotive devroom call for papers
by Philippe De Swert 31 Oct '15

31 Oct '15

Call For Participation Embedded, mobile and automotive devroom FOSDEM 2016 Devroom date: Saturday January 30st and Sunday 31st 2016 in Brussels, Belgium CFP deadline: Monday, December 7th 2014 Final speaker confirmation on Friday, December 18th 2014 CFP Introduction --------------------------- Embedded software is transforming the world, and FOSS embedded software is leading the way. From automotive to the Internet of Things, launching rockets, messing with your phone or automating your toaster, small devices, embedded systems, and automatons are everywhere Join in and tell the world about your project! NB: This year FOSDEM plans to record all presentations, no exceptions. Please only propose a talk that you're really able and willing to share. Topics Sought ------------------------ The embedded devroom seeks topics related to automotive, mobile, autonomous, and generally small systems. Related areas are of course of interest as well and our definition of "embedded" is elastic. CFP Schedule And Submission Details ----------------------------------------------------------- Please submit proposals no later than the 7th of December. Please use the following URL to submit your talk to FOSDEM 2016: https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM16 and follow the following rules: * If you do not have an account yet create one, if you have submitted a talk in one of the previous years re-use your old account. * Select as the Track "embedded devroom". * Select as the Event Type "Lecture" * Include a title. (Note that "Subtitle" entry doesn't appear on all conference documents, so make sure "Title" can stand on its own without "Subtitle" present.) * Include an Abstract of about 500 characters and a full description of any length you wish, but in both fields, please be concise, but clear and descriptive. * Indicate whether you seek a 25, or 50 minute slot. * Use the "Links" sub-area to your past work in the field you'd like to share. * Also in the notes field, confirmation your availability to speak on Saturday 30 January or 31 February 2016 in Brussels. * Last but not least, make sure you have up to date contact info. Feel free to send an email to the embedded mailing list should you have any questions with the conference system. Subscribe here: https://lists.fosdem.org/listinfo/embedded-devroom About the devroom organizers -------------------------------------------------- The co-organizers of the FOSDEM 2016 Embedded devroom are (in alphabetical order by surname): - Peter De Schrijver, Kernel engineer at Nvidia - Philippe De Swert, HW adaptation engineer at Jolla - Jeremiah C. Foster, GENIVI Community Manager - Thomas Petazzoni, CTO Free Electrons - Geert Uytterhoeven, Glider bvba 86,1 95%

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[CFP] FOSDEM 2016, RTC devroom, speakers, volunteers neeeded
by Daniel Pocock 30 Oct '15

30 Oct '15

FOSDEM is one of the world's premier meetings of free software developers, with over five thousand people attending each year. FOSDEM 2016 takes place 30-31 January 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. http://fosdem.org This email contains information about: - Real-Time communications dev-room and lounge, - speaking opportunities, - volunteering in the dev-room and lounge, - related events around FOSDEM, including the XMPP summit, - social events (including the Saturday night dinner), - the Planet aggregation sites for RTC blogs Call for participation - Real Time Communications (RTC) ======================================================= The Real-Time dev-room and Real-Time lounge is about all things involving real-time communication, including: XMPP, SIP, WebRTC, telephony, mobile VoIP, codecs, privacy and encryption. The dev-room is a successor to the previous XMPP and telephony dev-rooms. We are looking for speakers for the dev-room and volunteers and participants for the tables in the Real-Time lounge. The dev-room is only on Saturday, 30 January 2016. The lounge will be present for both days. To discuss the dev-room and lounge, please join the FSFE-sponsored Free RTC mailing list: https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/free-rtc Speaking opportunities ---------------------- Note: if you used Pentabarf before, please use the same account/username Main track: the deadline for main track presentations is midnight today, 30 October. Leading developers in the Real-Time Communications field are encouraged to consider submitting a presentation to the main track at https://fosdem.org/submit Real-Time Communications dev-room: deadline 27 November Please also use the Pentabarf system to submit a talk proposal for the dev-room. On the "General" tab, please look for the "Track" option and choose "Real-Time devroom". https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM16/ Other dev-rooms: some speakers may find their topic is in the scope of more than one dev-room. It is permitted to apply to more than one dev-room but please be kind enough to tell us if you do this. You can find the full list of dev-rooms at https://www.fosdem.org/2016/schedule/tracks/ Lightning talks: deadline 27 November The lightning talks are an excellent opportunity to introduce a wider audience to your project. Given that dev-rooms are becoming increasingly busy, all speakers are encouraged to consider applying for a lightning talk as well as a slot in the dev-room. On the "General" tab, please look for the "Track" option and choose "Lightning Talks". https://fosdem.org/submit First-time speaking? -------------------- FOSDEM dev-rooms are a welcoming environment for people who have never given a talk before. Please feel free to contact the dev-room administrators personally if you would like to ask any questions about it. Submission guidelines --------------------- The Pentabarf system will ask for many of the essential details. Please remember to re-use your account from previous years if you have one. In the "Submission notes", please tell us about: - the purpose of your talk - any other talk applications (dev-rooms, lightning talks, main track) - availability constraints and special needs You can use HTML in your bio, abstract and description. If you maintain a blog, please consider providing us with the URL of a feed with posts tagged for your RTC-related work. We will be looking for relevance to the conference and dev-room themes, presentations aimed at developers of free and open source software about RTC-related topics. Please feel free to suggest a duration between 20 minutes and 55 minutes but note that the final decision on talk durations will be made by the dev-room administrators. As the two previous dev-rooms have been combined into one, we may decide to give shorter slots than in previous years so that more speakers can participate. Please note FOSDEM aims to record and live-stream all talks. The CC-BY license is used. For any questions, please join the FSFE-sponsored Free RTC mailing list: https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/free-rtc Volunteers needed ================= To make the dev-room and lounge run successfully, we are looking for volunteers: - FOSDEM provides video recording equipment and live streaming, volunteers are needed to assist in this - organizing one or more restaurant bookings (dependending upon number of participants) for the evening of Saturday, 30 January - participation in the Real-Time lounge - helping attract sponsorship funds for the dev-room to pay for the Saturday night dinner and any other expenses - circulating this Call for Participation to other mailing lists FOSDEM is made possible by volunteers and if you have time to contribute, please feel free to get involved through https://volunteers.fosdem.org/ Related events - XMPP and RTC summits ===================================== The XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF) has traditionally held a summit in the days before FOSDEM. There is discussion about a similar summit taking place on 28 and 29 January 2016 http://wiki.xmpp.org/web/Summit_19 - please join the mailing list for details: http://mail.jabber.org/mailman/listinfo/summit We are also considering a more general RTC or telephony summit, potentially on 29 January. Please join the Free-RTC mailing list and send an email if you would be interested in participating, sponsoring or hosting such an event. Social events and dinners ========================= The traditional FOSDEM beer night occurs on Friday, 29 January On Saturday night, there are usually dinners associated with each of the dev-rooms. Most restaurants in Brussels are not so large so these dinners have space constraints. Please subscribe to the Free-RTC mailing list for further details about the Saturday night dinner options and how you can register for a seat: https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/free-rtc Spread the word and discuss =========================== If you know of any mailing lists where this CfP would be relevant, please forward this email. If this dev-room excites you, please blog or microblog about it, especially if you are submitting a talk. If you regularly blog about RTC topics, please send details about your blog to the planet site administrators: http://planet.jabber.org ralphm(a)ik.nu http://planet.sip5060.net daniel(a)pocock.pro http://planet.opentelecoms.org daniel(a)pocock.pro Please also link to the Planet sites from your own blog or web site. Contact ======= For discussion and queries, please join the free-rtc mailing list: https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/free-rtc The dev-room administration team: Daniel Pocock <daniel(a)pocock.pro> Ralph Meijer <ralphm(a)ik.nu> Saúl Ibarra Corretgé <saul(a)ag-projects.com> Iain R. Learmonth <irl(a)debian.org>

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Ruby devroom CFP
by R. Tyler Croy 30 Oct '15

30 Oct '15

(a version of this is located here: http://fosdem.rubybelgium.be/cfp) ## Intro The Ruby Devroom at FOSDEM is an interpreter and runtime focused developer room for the Ruby programming language. Its goal is to host technical content focused around the Ruby language and the numerous open source projects and initiatives which implement, extend and instrument the Ruby language. The time format for presentations in the Ruby devroom is not set in stone, but the ideal duration is around 35-45 minutes with Q&A included. We are open to suggestions for panels and/or more open, moderated, discussions provided the topics proposed fit with the theme of the room. ### Talks/topics we'd like to see Some suggestions on the kinds of topics we would like to see discussed in the Ruby devroom: * The current state of the Ruby language itself * Presentations on the techniques employed by various Ruby virtual machines and interpreters, along with the effectiveness and/or trade-offs of implementing those techniques * Upcoming Ruby language features, and the implementation challenges and/or user benefits that they provide * Tools and practices used to certify Ruby language conformity and evaluate its performance * Costs and Opportunities provided by the multitude of implementations * Ways to extend the language (natively or not) ## Submitting To submit a proposal to present in the Ruby devroom, please submit your proposal on https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM16 ### Steps 1. You *will* need to create an account if you do not already have an account from previous years. 2. Click the "Create event" link 3. Enter the details for your presentation 4. You **must** select the "**Ruby devroom**" track in your submission. If you don't we might never see your proposal! 5. Submit! Presentation are recorded and will be made available with CC-BY licence by FOSDEM. ## Important Dates * End of the Call for Participation: **December 1st, 2015** * Announcement of accepted proposals: **December 15th, 2015** * FOSDEM 2016: **January 30th 31st, 2016** We look forward to seeing you all there! Cheers - R. Tyler Croy ------------------------------------------------------ Code: <https://github.com/rtyler> Chatter: <https://twitter.com/agentdero> % gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-key 3F51E16F ------------------------------------------------------

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GNU Guile Devroom
by Pjotr Prins 30 Oct '15

30 Oct '15

# GNU Guile devroom call for talks @FOSDEM 2016 For the first time ever, we have a GNU Guile devroom at FOSDEM on January 30, 2016. The call for talk proposals is open! Important members of the GNU Guile and GNU Guix community will attend. We are excited because FOSDEM is one of the most important FOSS conferences and is hosted annually at [Université libre de Bruxelles in Brussels, Belgium](https://fosdem.org/2016/practical/transportation/); the devroom will host 80 people. Submissions for talks are due on November 30, 2015. ## Topics GNU Guile is the preferred extension system for the GNU Project which features an implementation of the Scheme programming language, a dialect of Lisp. Especially technical talks are invited on topics concerning GNU Guile and applications that use Guile (such as GNU Guix, Lilypond and Gnucash). In the talks both experienced Guile programmers and newbies should be addressed. FOSDEM is a great opportunity to attract people interested in GNU Guile and Lisp. Examples of (already proposed) talks could be - Guile programming: + functors and monads in Guile + composable continuations in Guile + posix programming in Guile and the FFI - Web frameworks with GNU Guile - GNU Guix: + GNU/Hurd support in Guix + R, Perl, Python and Ruby support in GNU Guix + Reproducible pipelines for Guix + Guix environments (VM, Docker) - Guile and the network: + Software distribution using Gnunet + Paving a path to greater network freedom using Guix and Guile ## Submit talk Feel free to submit your own topic or even run with one of these. The most interesting talks will be selected. Talks are 15 or 30 minutes (including Q&A; please notify in the application your preference) on GNU Guile related projects. Please note that presenting at FOSDEM implies giving permission to be recorded. The recordings will be published under the same licence as all FOSDEM content (CC-BY). Submit your proposal here: https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM16 If you submitted a talk to a previous FOSDEM, you should already have an account, so make sure that you log in with your existing account. You should only need to create an account if you have not submitted a talk to FOSDEM in recent years. After you have your account configured (you will receive a confirmation email), create the event, and click on "Show all" in the top right corner to diplay the full form. When submitting your talk make doubly sure to select "GNU Guile devroom" as track, and include the following information: * The title and subtitle of your talk * A short abstract of one paragraph * A longer description if you wish to do so * Links to related websites/blogs etc

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Fwd: Re: It's time for a Code of Conduct
by Jens Finkhäuser 30 Oct '15

30 Oct '15

(I think I used a different email address first, and my email didn't make it through). Imifos, I've got to agree with your contributions here. But to add to all this: http://adainitiative.org/continue-our-work/conference-policies/ links to http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-harassment_policy_resources which is IMHO a must-read for everyone discussing here. It covers all the arguments I've seen here, plus is a good guide for what's needed - and also what isn't. (FYI, thoughtcrime detection drones with tasers aren't required, though some reactions here read like that's what people are afraid of.) "Be excellent to each other!" Jens On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 10:28:35AM +0100, Imifos wrote: > > even if nobody is able to enforce a code > > > We need indeed to have a dedicated team of a few educated, open-minded and > "experienced-in-negotiation" people that are present, easy "findable" and > having the "power" to intervene - or just show presence. Then we need a > clear communication to the attendees. > > > > there is not enough consensus to have one > > > There is absolutely no need for consensus. The only thing that is needed is > a word of power from the FOSDEM core team, followed by someone the core > team trusts that handles this aspect. > > > Easy peasy :-) > > > Cheers > > /tc > > On 30 October 2015 at 10:19, Daniel Pocock <daniel(a)pocock.pro> wrote: > > > On 30/10/15 09:44, Sanel Zukan wrote: > > > Tom Marble <tmarble(a)info9.net> writes: > > >> FOSDEM Organizers: > > >> > > >> FOSDEM is a fantastic conference and the only thing I can > > >> think of that would make it better is publishing a Code of Conduct: > > >> > > >> http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2015/02/01/the-fosdem-conundrum/ > > >> > > >> https://twitter.com/fosdem/status/561885201383821312 > > >> > > >> Will the FOSDEM 2016 edition have a CoC? > > > -1 > > > > > > I think this should be done per room/project basis if admin prefers so I > > > can choose whether to participate in that room or not. Your links are > > > jokes (open statement and a joke) and if you have issues with them, I > > > believe you are not familiar with cultural differences or not > > > understainding writer intentions. > > > > > > Some cultures has really open joke format just as some cultures are > > > using cursing words openly, so should I be offended if someone mention > > 'f*ck' > > > because his/her projector is not working or because he tried to visually > > > explain his problem? > > > > > > FOSDEM is open conference and if CoC (good name btw) is going to be > > > enforced, what to expect in a years after that? Dress code or shaved > > > faces, because someone finds that offending? > > > > The "E" in FOSDEM is for Europe, so it is probably not reasonable to > > suggest FOSDEM needs to find a way to make behavior from every region of > > the world compatible, just attempting to suggest what it is for the > > standards that residents of European countries expect is enough. > > > > It is all very well to give examples of where a code of conduct "worked" > > or was "used" for something. It is not hard to find just as many > > examples (both conferences and workplaces) where people have violated > > such codes (and possibly even the law) and the people responsible have > > covered it up or talked their way around it because it wasn't convenient > > to enforce the code or the law. > > > > So the real question is, if there is a code of conduct, who is going to > > enforce it and how? > > > > I'm not arguing for or against the code itself, I would just like to see > > people talk about > > (a) what is the problem they are trying to fix, > > (b) what they will actually do about it (and what are alternatives) and > > (c) how FOSDEM will be better as a consequence. > > > > However, even if nobody is able to enforce a code or there is not enough > > consensus to have one, it would be useful to give a statement about the > > principles that we value and agree on. That is all it is, a statement > > of a principles, not some new law that somebody is going to try to > > enforce. Such statements help to remind people and give them a point of > > reference and simply repeating such things often enough (like > > advertisements for fast food) can have an effect in the long term. > > > > There are other ways to approach these issues too, such as recognizing > > people who do positive things to make FOSDEM and our industry more > > pleasant to participate in. > > > > Regards, > > > > Daniel > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > FOSDEM mailing list > > FOSDEM(a)lists.fosdem.org > > https://lists.fosdem.org/listinfo/fosdem > > > > > !DSPAM:1,56333af330771377015532! > _______________________________________________ > FOSDEM mailing list > FOSDEM(a)lists.fosdem.org > https://lists.fosdem.org/listinfo/fosdem > > !DSPAM:1,56333af330771377015532! -- 1.21 Jiggabytes of memory ought to be enough for anybody.

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Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom CFP
by Tom Marble 29 Oct '15

29 Oct '15

###################################################################### Call For Participation Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom at FOSDEM 2016 CONFERENCE DATE: Saturday & Sunday 30-31 January 2016 in Brussels, Belgium CFP DEADLINE: Sunday 29 November 2015 at 23:00 UTC SPEAKERS NOTIFIED: Friday 4 December 2015 (on or before) CFP Introduction ================ Open Source and Free Software are possible as a result of hacks on copyright law. Patent and trademark law and the emerging law of data privacy and security also dramatically affect Free Software development. Governance and policies around free software set the rules for collaboration and can be critical to a project's success. Our community has more expertise in this area than you think! The constant mantra of "you'd have to ask a lawyer" has, in our view, given way to the undeniable fact that many participants in Free Software development (both lawyers and non-lawyers are alike) *are* the experts. And we need to discuss these matters in an forum open to all. TL;DR Lawyers, hackers and contributors alike are encouraged to submit on any project policy or legal topic as long as it's medium or advanced and should fill out an application on Pentabarf (see below for details). Topics Sought ============= This DevRoom seeks proposals for 25 and 45 minute talks and/or panel discussions that address the issues of software freedom project policies that are beyond and/or orthogonal to technical issues of the project. Such topics could include, but aren't necessarily limited to: * Who controls the copyright, trademark, or patent licensing, release plans, or security bug reporting policies of your project, and why? What challenges have you faced in these policy areas and how are you seeking to change it? * How is your project governed? Do you have a non-profit organization, or a for-profit company that primarily controls your project, or neither? Do you wish your project governance was different? Who decided your governance initially? What politics (good and bad) have occurred around your governance choices and how have you changed your policy? Does your project have a "shadow governance", whereby technical governance is open and fair, but some entity has its own opaque political structure that influences your project? Are you worried that your project might and you don't know? Talks exploring these issues are welcome. * Legal topics of all sorts and their interaction with software freedom culture and work remain welcome, and could include: How does your project make use of legal advice? What legal advice do you give projects and what topics do you put first on the list to worry about in projects? Discuss in detail a legal and/or policy issue a project faced and how did your community deal with it? What lessons did you learn? * Contribution and engagement policies: how does your project engage new contributors and what policy decisions did your project make to welcome new contributors? What legal issues or policy concerns has your project faced historically in its community engagement efforts, and what did you learn from these experiences? * How does money impact your community? Are all your developers paid? What policies do you set to welcome volunteers to join a community where most developers are paid? Does reliance on volunteer labor lead to lack of diversity since only the affluent can participate? * How do projects handle conflicts of interest and make sure that relevant interests of contributors are disclosed in important decision making discussions? * Case studies of positive examples of commercial actors in Free Software. * Talks on license compliance, licensing business models, and anything you've seen in our DevRoom before are of course welcome. Regarding topic relevancy, here's the only "don't": please don't propose introductory talks; there are other venues appropriate for those. FOSDEM is the meeting place of experts in Open Source and Free Software project governance, law, and policy. This DevRoom is for intermediate to advanced topics surrounding just about anything you might call a "legal" or "policy" issue for your project! Should I Submit? ================ However, do consider that what may seem elementary to you may in fact be an intermediate topic in this area. In particular, while we expect many submissions from lawyers, we've found in our careers that non-lawyers often know just as much (and sometimes more) about these topics than lawyers. Developers who regularly face complex policy and legal questions for projects are strongly and particularly encouraged to submit proposals. Historically, some of the most lively and intriguing talks in this DevRoom's previous years have been from developers who have been thrust (often due to circumstances beyond their control) into dealing with legal and policy topics for Open Source and Free Software. Be sure to look at past talks in our DevRoom for inspiration: https://archive.fosdem.org/2015/schedule/track/legal_and_policy_issues/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2014/schedule/track/legal_and_policy_issues/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/track/legal_issues/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2012/schedule/track/legal_issues_devroom.html CFP Schedule And Submission Details =================================== Submit proposals NO LATER THAN 29 November 2015 at 23:00 UTC Please use the following URL to submit your talk to FOSDEM 2016: https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM16 and follow the following rules: * Select as the Track "Legal and Policy Issues devroom". * Include a title. (Note that "Subtitle" entry doesn't appear on all conference documents, so make sure "Title" can stand on its own without "Subtitle" present.) * Include an Abstract of about 500 characters and a full description of any length you wish, but in both fields, please be concise, but clear and descriptive. * Indicate whether you seek a 25 or 45 minute slot. NOTE: the quality of the submission needs to be progressively *more impressive* the longer time you ask for and we may accept your submission with an alternate duration as our schedule is so tight. * Use the "Links" sub-area to your past work in the field you'd like to share. Particularly helpful are recordings (audio/video) of your past talks on the subject or past papers/blog posts you've written on the subject. * You are encouraged to enter biographic information under the "Person" section (e.g. you may upload an image, enter your background in the "Description" tab, and sites of interest under the "Links" tab). * Affirmative confirmation that you agree to CC-By-SA-4.0 or Cc-By-4.0 licensing of your talk, in the "Submission Notes" field. Add a statement such as this: "Should my presentation be scheduled for FOSDEM 2016, I hereby agree to license all recordings, slides and any other materials presented under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International license. Sincerely, s/YOUR_NAME/" * Also in the notes field, note your affirmative confirmation of availability to speak on Saturday 31 January 2016 in Brussels. (You may include time slots of non-availability on Saturday, but this may negatively impact acceptance decisions.) Failure to follow these instructions above (and those on the FOSDEM 2016 site) may result in automatic rejection of your talk submission. However, if you have trouble with submission via the official system, please do contact <fosdem-legal-policy(a)faif.us> for assistance. Travel Funding does not exist (sadly)! -------------------------------------- We are volunteer track organizers of a volunteer conference. We cannot sponsor travel ourselves. However, please *do* submit anyway if you aren't sure about your travel funding and mention in your application that you have uncertainties. Please note that we may have to deny your proposal due to lack of travel funding alone, but we would like the opportunity to talk and discuss the situation with highly exceptional speakers who would like to join our DevRoom but can't due to lack of funding. Diversity Statement ------------------- The organizers of this DevRoom are committed to increasing the diversity of the free software movement, and to making the diversity that already exists more visible. To that end, our CFP process takes demographic information into account in order to build a program that features as many different voices and perspectives as possible. Please share any demographic information about yourself in the "Submissions Notes" field that you are comfortable sharing. Such disclosure is not mandatory by any means. No Assurance of Acceptance -------------------------- The organizers (listed below) realize many of our friends and colleagues will respond to this CFP. Based on our many previous years of experience in this DevRoom, we must welcome submissions from all, but an invitation from any of us to submit is *not* an assurance of acceptance. We typically must make hard decisions. About the DevRoom Organizers ============================ The co-organizers of the FOSDEM 2016 Legal and Policy Issues DevRom are (in alphabetical order by surname): - Richard Fontana, Open Source Counsel, Red Hat - Bradley M. Kuhn, Distinguished Technologist, Software Freedom Conservancy, Director of the Free Software Foundation - Tom Marble, Creative Technologist, Informatique, Inc. - Karen Sandler, Executive Director of the Software Freedom Conservancy, Pro Bono Counsel to the Free Software Foundation, GNOME Foundation and QuestionCopyright.org You are welcome to contact us all at <fosdem-legal-policy(a)faif.us> with questions about this CFP. ######################################################################

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[CFP] Config Management Devroom at FOSDEM 2016
by Heck, Walter 29 Oct '15

29 Oct '15

The FOSDEM Call for Proposals for the Configuration Management devroom on January 31, 2016 is open! FOSDEM Submissions are due on December 1, 2015. If you submitted a talk to a previous FOSDEM, you should already have an account in Pentabarf, so make sure that you log in with your existing account. You should only need to create an account if you have not submitted a talk to FOSDEM in recent years. FOSDEM has a bunch of devrooms, so please make sure that you select the "Configuration Management" devroom in the "Track" dropdown when you submit your talk. Submissions filed under an incorrect devroom will not be noticed. Submit here: https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM16 Topic Description: Mini-talks from real world case studies, brainstorming and hacking around configuration and systems management from complex virtual environments and cloud computing to desktops and laptops. There is huge interest in automation, monitoring, performance management, configuration management, and DevOps. We are looking for presentations from people who are working in the field on these topics: * Configuration and Systems Management theory, principles and development * Configuration and Systems Management tools - with an emphasis on real world use cases * Techniques and case studies * Audit, Compliance and Security * Various DevOps topics, including collaboration and training tips. Please note that presenting at FOSDEM implies giving permission to be recorded. The recordings will be published under the same licence as all FOSDEM content (CC-BY). This same team of people is also organizing ConfigManagementCamp, which is in nearby Gent on February 1st and 2nd. The CFP is also open, and we encourage you to submit your talks before the December 1, 2015 deadline. Details: http://cfgmgmtcamp.eu/#contributions Regards, Walter Heck -- Best regards, Walter Heck CTO / Founder OlinData <http://olindata.com/?src=wh_gapp> - Open Source Training & Consulting Check out our upcoming trainings <http://olindata.com/training/upcoming>

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Open Game Development Room at FOSDEM – Call for Participation
by Jesse Himmelstein 29 Oct '15

29 Oct '15

Hello everyone, We have a call for participation up for the Open Game Development devroom. http://gamelier.org/open-game-development-room-at-fosdem-call-for-participa… Best Jesse -- Jesse Himmelstein Chief Technical Officer Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI) 8-10 rue Charles V 75004 Paris, France E-mail : jesse.himmelstein(a)parisdescartes.fr Web : www.cri-paris.org Tel : +33 (0) 6 25 30 07 93 Fax : +33 (0) 1 44 41 25 29 Skype : drfunky

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