{ "schedule": [ { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-07T09:15:00", "end": "2026-08-07T09:45:00", "duration": 30, "kind": "Coffee/tea break", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 232, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Breakfast and coffee break" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-09T09:15:00", "end": "2026-08-09T09:45:00", "duration": 30, "kind": "Coffee/tea break", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 234, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Breakfast and coffee break" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-08T09:15:00", "end": "2026-08-08T09:45:00", "duration": 30, "kind": "Coffee/tea break", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 233, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Breakfast and coffee break" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-09T09:45:00", "end": "2026-08-09T10:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Keynote Session", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 231, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Community Discussion about Generative AI: Where do we go from here? Identifying ethical conflicts, risks and opportunities" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-08T09:45:00", "end": "2026-08-08T10:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 230, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Saturday Keynote: Fedicon Panel", "authors": [ { "name": "Karen Sandler", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "she/her", "twitter": "o0karen0o", "mastodon": "karen@floss.social", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5e77b6e5743dd274a0bc00806cb082de?s=120&d=mp", "code": "411", "biography": "Karen M. Sandler is an attorney and the executive director of Software Freedom Conservancy, a 501c3 nonprofit organization focused on ethical technology. As a patient deeply concerned with the technology in her own body, Karen is known as a cyborg lawyer for her advocacy for free software as a life-or-death issue, particularly in relation to the software on medical devices. She co-organizes Outreachy, the award-winning outreach program for people who face under-representation, systemic bias, or discrimination in tech. She is an adjunct Lecturer-In-Law of Columbia Law School and a visiting scholar at University of California Santa Cruz.\r\n\r\nPrior to joining Software Freedom Conservancy, Karen was the executive director of the GNOME Foundation. Before that, she was the general counsel of the Software Freedom Law Center. She began her career as a lawyer at Clifford Chance and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.\r\n\r\nKaren received her law degree from Columbia Law School where she was a James Kent Scholar and co-founder of the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review. She also holds a bachelor of science in engineering from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.\r\n\r\nSandler has won awards for her work on behalf of software freedom, including the O\u2019Reilly Open Source Award in 2011. She received an honorary doctorate from KU Leuven in 2023.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Description coming soon!", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/478/", "cancelled": false, "twitter_id": "o0karen0o", "mastodon_id": "karen@floss.social" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-07T09:45:00", "end": "2026-08-07T10:25:00", "duration": 40, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 229, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "CanRepair! Exploring Canada's World-Leading Right to Repair Efforts", "authors": [ { "name": "Denver Gingerich", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5ca795f06b3505f43bf7ba26fef37c7d?s=120&d=mp", "code": "634", "biography": "Denver is a software right-to-repair activist who is currently Director of Compliance at Software Freedom Conservancy, where he enforces software right-to-repair licenses such as the GPL, and is also a director of the worker co-operative that runs JMP.chat, a FOSS phone number (texting/calling) service. Denver writes free software in his spare time: his patches have been accepted into Wine, Linux, and wdiff. He gives presentations about digital civil rights and how to ensure FOSS remains sustainable as a community and financially, having spoken at conferences such as FOSSY, SCALE, the Canadian Repair Convention, WineConf, FOSDEM, Linux Plumbers Conference, SFSCON, CopyleftConf, Radical Networks, DebConf, Git Merge, CopyCamp Toronto, FOSSLC's Summercamp, and the Open Video Conference.", "username": "" }, { "name": "Alissa Centivany", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/3de645c072eec4eca80364cefd232a37?s=120&d=mp", "code": "665", "biography": "Associate Professor Alissa Centivany is a researcher in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University. Her primary investigative work centers on information policy, intellectual property, and the right to repair with a focus on the intersection of technology and law. She seeks to understand how legal frameworks and design choices impact innovation, sustainability, and community autonomy. Holding a Juris Doctor and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Michigan, she is affiliated with the Rotman Institute of Philosophy. She teaches courses on data ethics and digital ownership and is currently available for doctoral supervision.", "username": "" }, { "name": "Rick Gold", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "Him", "twitter": "thestemgroup", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/a393c053666ea37c1c61110a4aedfc3c?s=120&d=mp", "code": "662", "biography": "Rick Gold is the founder of The Stem Group, a Calgary-based technology company providing computer and mobile-device repair, Apple support, web development, video production and cybersecurity services. With more than 30 years of experience in technology\u2014including a history as an Apple Value Added Reseller\u2014Rick has seen firsthand how closed systems, restricted repair access and forced replacement affect both users and independent service providers.\r\n\r\nAn active advocate for Right to Repair in Canada, Rick brings a practical, frontline perspective to conversations about ownership, interoperability, software freedom and digital autonomy. His work focuses on helping individuals and small organizations maintain control of the technology they depend on, rather than being trapped by unnecessary replacement cycles, artificial restrictions or corporate roadblocks.", "username": "" }, { "name": "Suvro", "name_pronunciation": "Shoe - Vro (rhyms with bro)", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fdf47f8e99d6605d45bfc0e6b26072e0?s=120&d=mp", "code": "664", "biography": "\u2022 Avid nature lover. lets talk about fishing.\r\n\u2022 Working on reducing my carbon footprint. lets talk about solar and van conversion.\r\n\u2022 Intrigued by Distributed Systems, Linux Kernel and open source.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "The right to repair (R2R) movement has existed in many forms for over a century. Software, and the FOSS movement in particular (a subset of this larger R2R movement), is becoming more critical to these efforts.\r\nExciting work being done here in Canada grounds the incredible global movement that continues to grow. Join us for this panel to learn about recent developments in the broader right to repair movement, how people leading the movement in Canada got their start, and how right to repair is improving both in Canada and around the world.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/477/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-06T10:15:00", "end": "2026-08-06T13:15:00", "duration": 180, "kind": "Registration", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 239, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Registration Open" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-07T10:25:00", "end": "2026-08-07T10:35:00", "duration": 10, "kind": "Keynote Session", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 398, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Presentation of the Distinguished Service Award in Software Freedom" }, { "room": "CEME 1212", "rooms": [ "CEME 1212" ], "start": "2026-08-07T10:45:00", "end": "2026-08-07T11:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Toolchain and Other Developer Tools", "conf_key": 291, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "What Other Toolchains Should Copy From Plan 9", "authors": [ { "name": "Anthony Sorace", "name_pronunciation": "Anthony Sor-AH-see", "pronouns": "He/him", "twitter": "In 2026? Nope.", "mastodon": "@a@pdx.social", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/20a2179cbfe0078d20a89fa869124dcb?s=120&d=mp", "code": "631", "biography": "Anthony is some sort of engineer. Professionally, his work has focused on system architecture and process analysis, looking at how people can use computers to solve (some of) their problems. On the side, he enjoys messing about with networking, databases, and systems software, largely in the Plan 9 alternate universe. He is a slightly reluctant web programmer but an enthusiastic cook. Unix warped his mind at a young age and he has been using Plan 9 since the late nineteen hundreds, a few weeks before starting a job at Bell Labs working with related technology. He currently serves as a director of the Plan 9 Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to advancing research and education on lightweight distributed systems using these technologies.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Development in Plan 9 follows a very traditional workflow, with most software written in C and compilation driven by mk, a make-like tool. But, like the rest of the system, the development environment was written from scratch, providing the opportunity to make different choices throughout the environment. Everything from the naming of the compilers to system conventions for where binaries and libraries are stored was re-evaluated with the networked and heterogeneous nature of Plan 9 in mind. This has provided a number of affordances that are still uncommon in other systems.\r\n\r\nIn particular, building software on Plan 9 across architectures, from \u2018cat\u2019 to the kernel, typically involves setting a single environment variable, then building like normal. The entire userspace system can be rebuilt across architectures this way, with a single command; one server can build the kernels for all supported architectures.\r\n\r\nAs something of a case study, we\u2019ll look at how the go toolchain has applied these lessons, well outside the Plan 9 world, to make building across both operating systems and architectures surprisingly easy. We\u2019ll also look at an ongoing project to make the Plan 9 development toolchain available in other environments.\r\n\r\nThe hope of this talk is that folks working on newer toolchains, particularly for newer environments, might be able to productively apply these ideas and make development more pleasant for everyone.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/388/", "cancelled": false, "twitter_id": "In 2026? Nope.", "mastodon_id": "@a@pdx.social" }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-07T10:45:00", "end": "2026-08-07T11:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Open Source Governance and Community Stability", "conf_key": 285, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "The PHP Foundation and The Challenge of Sustaining Critical Digital Infrastructure", "authors": [ { "name": "Elizabeth Barron", "name_pronunciation": "eh-liz-uh-beth bear-ron", "pronouns": "she/her", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/9a0aefd2974641dc38447d445ef6b832?s=120&d=mp", "code": "622", "biography": "Elizabeth Barron is the Executive Director of The PHP Foundation, an organization focused on the long term sustainability of the PHP language and ecosystem. She is a long time open source contributor and advocate with almost 30 years of experience at organizations like GitHub, Pivotal/VMWare, Sourceforge, and CHAOSS (Community Health Analytics in Open Source Software). She is also a published author, public speaker, community organizer, and award winning nature photographer. She is currently working toward achieving her MBA and she lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Used by over 34 million websites, PHP powers a large portion of the web. But as a community-owned language without a single owner, sustaining the language has become a shared challenge. The PHP Foundation was created to support those efforts by funding contributors and strengthening the growing ecosystem without direct governance, helping ensure this critical piece of digital open source infrastructure continues to thrive.\r\n\r\nThis talk explores The PHP Foundation\u2019s origins, its unique relationship with the PHP community, and how it not only supports maintainers and ongoing development of the language, but also how it supports the other pieces of the PHP ecosystem. We\u2019ll examine how this model differs from traditional open source foundations and what it reveals about sustaining widely used, but often underfunded, technologies. \r\n\r\nAttendees will leave with a clearer understanding of how critical digital infrastructure is maintained and why evolving sustainability models matter for the future of open source.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/444/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "CEME 1202", "rooms": [ "CEME 1202" ], "start": "2026-08-08T10:45:00", "end": "2026-08-08T11:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Fedicon", "conf_key": 314, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Loops: One Year Later", "authors": [ { "name": "Dan Supernault", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/d4ea9dfbe40ad0e70f709a78ac78e4b9?s=120&d=mp", "code": "656", "biography": "", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Last year at FediCon I gave a keynote on Pixelfed and previewed Loops, a federated answer to short-form video. Twelve months later, Loops is a working platform: a Laravel backend speaking ActivityPub, a Vue 3 frontend, and native React Native apps on iOS and Android. This talk is a candid look at the year between the preview and the platform.\r\n\r\nI\u2019ll walk through what shipped: the For You feed without surveillance, federation with the wider fediverse, creator tools, Starter Kits, and Playlists. I\u2019ll also cover what it actually took to build all of this across three stacks as a single, community-funded developer, including the hard problems unique to federating video, the trade-offs I made, and where Loops goes from here.\r\n\r\nIf you care about what ethical short-form video looks like, or about shipping ambitious open-source software without VC backing, this talk is for you.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/469/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "CEME 1210", "rooms": [ "CEME 1210" ], "start": "2026-08-07T10:45:00", "end": "2026-08-07T11:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Linux Kernel", "conf_key": 307, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "From iptables to bpfilter: a fast, simple firewall for Linux", "authors": [ { "name": "Yaakov Stein", "name_pronunciation": "Yah-kove", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ac870ef2976439146cfdbf125425b838?s=120&d=mp", "code": "554", "biography": "Yaakov is a software engineer at Meta specializing in eBPF and Linux kernel networking. He is a core contributor to the bpfilter project, an open-source initiative to modernize Linux packet filtering using eBPF. His work spans bpfilter's core internals, broadening its feature set, and bringing it to production environments. Previously, he contributed to the sched_ext project, building open-source tooling for eBPF-based Linux schedulers. Currently based in New York, Yaakov enjoys diving into systems and understanding how they work across the different levels of the stack.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "iptables and nftables have been the standard for Linux packet filtering for years. They work well, but as rulesets grow or network bandwidth increases, performance can become a bottleneck.\r\n\r\nbpfilter takes a different approach. It compiles filtering rules from an iptables-like DSL into efficient BPF programs, giving you faster packet processing without asking you to learn how to write complex BPF programs.\r\n\r\nThis talk covers:\r\n- How bpfilter compares to existing tools and what tradeoffs it makes\r\n- How to use it from a user's perspective\r\n- Where the project is headed and how the community can get involved\r\n\r\nYou'll leave with a clear picture of whether bpfilter is worth trying and how to get started.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/448/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 3002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3002" ], "start": "2026-08-08T10:45:00", "end": "2026-08-08T11:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "AI", "conf_key": 338, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Co-Building the Future: AI Alignment for Open Source Communities", "authors": [ { "name": "Emma Irwin", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "She/Her", "twitter": "NA", "mastodon": "sunnydeveloper.mastodon.social", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/944be2185d3372c3a711d2ac7b5940c7?s=120&d=mp", "code": "588", "biography": "Emma Irwin is founder and principal consultant at Open Practice Consulting and co-chairs the CHAOSS AI Aligment for Open Source Working Group. She has worked at the intersection of openness, source, education, science and data for over 20 years, including roles with Mozilla's Open Innovation Team, Microsoft's Open Source Programs Office, and Royal Roads University. Emma co-chairs the CHAOSS AI Alignment for Open Source Working Group.", "username": "" }, { "name": "Adrian Edwards", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/00593446de8a714f6878b8d5bcebf431?s=120&d=mp", "code": "663", "biography": "", "username": "" }, { "name": "Justin Wheeler", "name_pronunciation": "juhs\u2013tin whee\u2013lur", "pronouns": "he/him/his", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/68b8aa9673ba58f0e28b545c519d4ab7?s=120&d=mp", "code": "661", "biography": "**Justin Wheeler** is a Free Software activist and Open Source maintainer with a passion for the human health and well-being of the communities around the code. Justin currently works at [Red Hat](https://jwheel.org/categories/red-hat/) as the [Community Architect](https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/council/fca/) for the [Fedora Project](https://jwheel.org/categories/fedora/). In this role, Justin participates as a member of the [Fedora Council](https://jwheel.org/tags/fedora-council/), stewarding the Fedora community budget from Red Hat, and organizing the annual [Flock to Fedora](https://jwheel.org/tags/flock/) conference. Among many other things too.\r\n\r\nWith over a decade of experience in [Open Source](https://jwheel.org/categories/foss/), Justin often works in fast-moving, innovative organizations and communities. For nearly a decade, he participates in the [CHAOSS](https://jwheel.org/tags/chaoss-project/) project and community. He was part of a [Ford Foundation research cohort](https://jwheel.org/blog/2022/10/chaoss-dei-review-reflection/) in 2021\u20132022 and contributed to the DEI Working Group. Presently, he is a co-chair of the [CHAOSS AI Alignment Working Group](https://github.com/chaoss/wg-ai-alignment).\r\n\r\nJustin also has a connection and appreciation for collaboration and innovation in the public sector. This was honed during his years working with the [UNICEF Office of Innovation](https://jwheel.org/categories/unicef/), supporting the [UNICEF Venture Fund](https://www.unicefventurefund.org/). While at UNICEF, Justin designed and executed a guided twelve-month Open Source mentorship program for diverse start-up companies from around the world. Together with a team of mentors, Justin mentored twenty-three start-up companies from nineteen countries and five continents. Of these companies, fourteen achieved global recognition as [Digital Public Goods](https://digitalpublicgoods.net/digital-public-goods/) and three were acquired in multi-million dollar acquisitions.\r\n\r\nAs a [Fedora](https://jwheel.org/categories/fedora/) community member since 2015, Justin has played an influential role in shaping its direction. He is an advocate for DEI and co-founded the [Fedora DEI Team](https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/dei/) in 2016. He also co-founded the [Fedora Community Ops](https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/commops/) team to help drive greater collaboration among remote, asynchronous teams. In 2022, he was a driving force for helping Fedora earn its own global recognition [as a Digital Public Good](https://www.digitalpublicgoods.net/r/fedora-linux). Additionally, Justin often travels either as a speaker or representative of the community at various events.\r\n\r\nYou may find Justin on the speaker track at various conferences. He has appeared earliest at [All Things Open](https://allthingsopen.org/talk/what-open-source-and-j-k-rowling-have-in-common/) (Raleigh, NC, USA) and [DevConf CZ](https://devconf.info/cz) (Brno, Czechia) when he shared his experience as a student studying and contributing to Free Software. Later, Justin would go on to speak about measuring healthy communities at [CHAOSScon EU](https://jwheel.org/blog/2020/02/chaosscon-eu-2020-play-by-play/) and ethical AI systems in Open Source communities together with [Mike Nolan](https://nolski.rocks/) at the [FOSDEM](https://jwheel.org/blog/2020/04/fosdem-2020-pt-2-can-free-software-include-ethical-ai-systems/) conference (Brussels, Belgium). However, his favorite events are ones like [Open Source Conference Albania](https://jwheel.org/blog/2017/05/open-labs-tirana-albania/) (Tirana, Albania) and the double [OS Community Africa Festival](https://oscafest23.sched.com/event/1NCdz/building-an-operating-system-choose-your-own-adventure-in-open-source-contribution?iframe=no) + [CHAOSScon Africa](https://chaoss.community/chaosscon-2023-africa/) conferences (Lagos, Nigeria). Experiencing the emergent enthusiasm for Free Software in new contexts and getting to participate in the evolution of the culture is what renews the fight for Software Freedom.\r\n\r\nAdditionally, Justin also is a current or past contributor of other Open Source projects, such as [SpigotMC](https://www.spigotmc.org/wiki/about-spigot/), [Opensource.com](https://opensource.com/users/jflory), [MusicBrainz](https://musicbrainz.org/doc/About), and Wikipedia. He is also an avid traveler and sets a personal goal to learn something new from the places he visits and the people he meets.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "AI is possible because open communities have collaborated and shared openly licensed code and content. AI models are dependent on thousands of open source projects to function, and have relied on countless open resources to obtain the level of intelligence we see today. One might even say that without access to openly licensed code and content, AI would lack the context of humanity altogether. Communities are on the defensive: reactively creating policies around how AI may, if at all, interact with humans or the output of their labour. We've also seen (among other reactive approaches) projects change licenses, communities change platforms, bug bounty programs shut down, policies ban AI contributions, and writers add subscription barriers to combat the unknown.\r\n\r\n> \"In the field of artificial intelligence (AI), alignment aims to steer AI systems toward a person's or group's intended goals, preferences, or ethical principles. An AI system is considered aligned if it advances the intended objectives. A misaligned AI system pursues unintended objectives.\" - AI Alignment, Wikipedia\r\n\r\nThe CHAOSS AI Alignment for Open Source Working Group (under the Linux Foundation) is a cross-community collaboration of practitioners working to define and build solutions that give power back to communities by providing tools and metrics to help communities move from objects of consumption to owners and facilitators of their future. In this talk, we will share efforts to define \"what success looks like\" for AI alignment with open communities around use, consent, embedded feedback, and detection. Specifically, we will cover:\r\n\r\n* Metric: AI Use + Consent (declaration). A metric focused on evaluating AI use and adherence to community policies.\r\n* Metric: AI Community Feedback (measurement). A metric model that focuses on whether feedback to providers produces observable change, at what cost, and whether the exchange is proportional to the effort.\r\n* Tool: CHAOSS AI Detection Action (inform/enable enforcement). Communities verify what is happening. The tool surfaces AI-authored or AI-assisted contributions from commit-level signals, including AI tool type and declared use.\r\n\r\nAs Shannon Vallor writes in The AI Mirror (which focuses on ethics + AI), these systems \"show only where the data say that we have already been, never where we might venture together for the first time.\" AI reflects our creative and imperfect pasts. We hope this work can help us forge a more optimistic future with communities in the driver's seat.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/443/", "cancelled": false, "twitter_id": "NA", "mastodon_id": "sunnydeveloper.mastodon.social" }, { "room": "MCLD 2018", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2018" ], "start": "2026-08-07T10:45:00", "end": "2026-08-07T11:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Fedicon", "conf_key": 297, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "10 Ways To Grow The Fediverse", "authors": [ { "name": "Evangelo S. Prodromou", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/7bc4dd4176f6c40c896798a661707c74?s=120&d=mp", "code": "654", "biography": "", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "How can we continue to grow the Fediverse? In this talk, Evan Prodromou, research director at the Social Web Foundation and author of \"ActivityPub: Programming for the Social Web\", will discuss upcoming initiatives to grow the population and activity of the Fediverse. He'll discuss work done by the SWF so far, and upcoming tools, projects and services to make using the Fediverse easier and more pleasant.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/467/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-08T10:45:00", "end": "2026-08-08T11:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Camp KDE", "conf_key": 353, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "A day in the life of KDE QA - how testing and triage help development", "authors": [ { "name": "Tracey Clark", "name_pronunciation": "tray see clark", "pronouns": "She/Her", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "tclark77+floss-social@tlcnet.info", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/426ccf0db765e9f28ee4fd51cee8524f?s=120&d=mp", "code": "632", "biography": "Tracey has been a software tester and automated test writer since 2011 who has used Linux since 2003. Her first memorable bug report was against urpmi in Mandrake, for a command line flag that did rm -rf on the directory where it was run. She has used a number of Linux distros, and currently volunteers with the Solus distro. She is also a KDE Contributor.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Ever wondered what happens to all the bug reports that get submitted? Wanted to help out with bug triage but didn't know how to get started? Want to know how bug reports help developers take action? Come find out!", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/395/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "tclark77+floss-social@tlcnet.info" }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-09T10:45:00", "end": "2026-08-09T11:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Science of Community", "conf_key": 399, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Community Event Organizing", "authors": [ { "name": "Michael Dexter", "name_pronunciation": "Canonical North American pronounciation", "pronouns": "He/Him", "twitter": "LOL no.", "mastodon": "@dexter@bsd.network", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/2940463bef733994c4ebf550290bb2c7?s=120&d=mp", "code": "643", "biography": "Michael has used BSD Unix since 1991 and advanced it through fundraising, community coordination, and dozens of conference talks around the world. He has also organized the Portland Linux/Unix Group from 2009 to 2024, coordinating over 150 speakers including Linus Torvalds. By day Michael provides support for Open Source storage solutions for users of all sizes. Michael lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and three children, cat, and three chickens.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Anyone can organize a community event and there are important factors to consider when your event grows in size. Learn the key elements, factors, strategies, tips, and techniques for successful events from a FOSS community member who has organized or co-organized approximately 200 events of all sizes around the world. Learn about:\r\n\r\n* Venues\r\n* Scheduling\r\n* Registration\r\n* Calls for Participation\r\n* Streaming and Inclusion\r\n* Teambuilding\r\n* Finances\r\n* Food", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/458/", "cancelled": false, "twitter_id": "LOL no.", "mastodon_id": "@dexter@bsd.network" }, { "room": "MCLD 3038", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3038" ], "start": "2026-08-09T10:45:00", "end": "2026-08-09T11:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "XMPP", "conf_key": 400, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "When Data Gets Heavy: Voice and Video for Large Groups", "authors": [ { "name": "Christopher Vollick", "name_pronunciation": "Vollick as in Volley-ball and \"ick gross\", stress on \"Voll\". Christopher in the North American tradition.", "pronouns": "He/Him", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/8e393efb71079444b2b91a84d3a87479?s=120&d=mp", "code": "625", "biography": "Christopher is a long-time FOSS-dweeb, and a hobbyist scripter that lucked into a career as a programmer. He currently works at MBOA where he works on XMPP stuff, among other things.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Text chat is relatively easy on the modern internet, but high quality audio, video, or desktop streaming starts to push the limits as the number of participants goes up. This talk will discuss the way that XMPP negotiates such datastreams, how it works in groups today, and an overview of solutions such as Selective Forwarding Units and Multipoint Control Units which could allow groups to grow far further. While these topics are technical, the presentation will attempt to explain them such that anyone who is curious will be able to get up to speed.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/370/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 3002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3002" ], "start": "2026-08-09T10:45:00", "end": "2026-08-09T11:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "AI", "conf_key": 401, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "The Open Source AI Definition: Where Do We Go From Here", "authors": [ { "name": "Duane O'Brien", "name_pronunciation": "Do - Wayne", "pronouns": "He/Him", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/382d72769dd2cae1d8609f40ad17348c?s=120&d=mp", "code": "607", "biography": "Duane is the Executive Director of the Open Source Initiative, the stewards of the Open Source Definition. He has a long history of building, leading, and advising open source program offices. Duane is a force of chaotic good using his high stats in intelligence and charisma to advocate for the open source community. If you encounter him in forested areas, he will share his fire, drink, and philosophy.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Starting in 2022, the Open Source Initiative began a multi-year effort to convene the community and craft a definition to describe Open Source AI. After two years of collaboration with the community, we released the Open Source AI Definition 1.0. While this marked an important milestone in this process, there is more work to be done. The community continues to have feedback on the definition, and the industry continues to evolve as these technologies progress. The conversation is far from over.\r\n\r\nA lot has happened in the last two years. It is important that we continue to examine this work, analyze the ongoing landscape, and continue to build community consensus when it comes to Open Source AI. We\u2019ve seen the emergence of models using OSI-approved licenses, industry convergence on the term \u201copen models,\u201d and a policy landscape that has a direct impact on how these technologies are built and adopted. Data continues to be a complicated part of this discussion, and we\u2019re starting to see good analysis of open versus closed AI systems that can inform our thinking.\r\n\r\nIn this talk, I will present an overview of the OSI\u2019s plans to continue this conversation. I will outline a new two-year program and our strategy for further engaging the community as we produce research, analysis, workshops, and white papers in the Open Source AI domain. This will include actionable guidance for how to participate in this process, and opportunities to help us bring a broader set of voices into the discussion.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/439/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 2012", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2012" ], "start": "2026-08-09T10:45:00", "end": "2026-08-09T11:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "FOSS in Daily Life", "conf_key": 402, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Encrypt Your Servers", "authors": [ { "name": "Romeo Solano", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "/site_media/media/speaker_photos/new_profile_pic_for_fossy_2026.jpeg.120x120_q85_crop.jpg", "code": "583", "biography": "Romeo is a professional Linux user who struggles writing an autobiography. Some of his work, which speaks for itself, can be found online at punkto.org. \r\n\r\nHe cares deeply about securing personal infrastructure from state-level adversaries. Everyone deserves for their personal computing and their infrastructure to keep their information safe from prying eyes.\r\n\r\nRomeo works professionally as a sysadmin for a bioinformatics research firm managing their infrastructure systems. In his free time, he works unprofessionally building systems for himself, family, and friends for fun. He winds up running things like a personal media server for his fianc\u00e9 and a password manager for his grandmother.\r\n\r\nRomeo likes to seek the silliest ways to solve problems, instead of the most sensible or cost-effective ways. This drive towards whimsy has brought him into technical situations that software developers and documentation writers never imagined. It has forced him to dive deep into the inner workings of various tools, a dive that has only been possible due to the Free nature of the software.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Encrypting the data stored on the disks of your server systems is a valuable tool that helps protect yourself and your users. This protects you from power-hungry privacy-hating governments and corrupt service providers, and it simplifies the e-cycling process. Say goodbye to DBAN and hello to LUKS.\r\n\r\nThis talk will cover both how to set up your encrypted server and how to encrypt some of the data on an existing unencrypted system. You will learn how to automate decryption unsafely and safely, and how to recover from reboots without needing physical access to your machine.\r\n\r\nWe'll talk about the overhead of software encryption and some of the trade-offs made.\r\n\r\nThe examples used in this presentation will be for Ubuntu Server, but they should be portable to any distro of your choice.\r\n\r\nA full writeup can be found on punkto.org.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/417/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 2012", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2012" ], "start": "2026-08-07T10:45:00", "end": "2026-08-07T11:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Legal Issues", "conf_key": 327, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "California Banned Your Operating System: Age verification mandates and FOSS", "authors": [ { "name": "Eric Schultz", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "They/them", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@wwahammy@social.treehouse.systems", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f74284f4ea38ec95a446e077352993fb?s=120&d=mp", "code": "547", "biography": "Eric Schultz is a Principal Software Engineer at Software for Good and a Digital Autonomy activist who is passionate about the promise and reality of free and open source software for user empowerment, especially those from marginalized groups. Previously, he worked as Chief Technology Officer at CommitChange until becoming CommitChange Technical Lead upon the project\u2019s acquisition. Before starting at CommitChange, in addition to software engineering, Eric served as Community Manager for multiple open source foundations, consulted with organizations on building open source software projects and advised the FCC on technical and practical issues around open source router technology. Eric lives in Appleton, Wisconsin, where outside of work he enjoys watching the Green Bay Packers and Milwaukee Bucks and researching family history.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Seemingly weekly, a new center-left or left-leaning government proposes requiring OS-level Age Attestation APIs. Already required in Brazil and starting in 2027 in California, these laws require operating system providers to pass age information about the device user to any third-party application that requests it. Eric Schultz dives into the effect of these laws and the politics around them in the FOSS community, the furor in the Desktop Linux community over compliance, their effect on the safety of minors (especially from marginalized communities), why they think they are gaining traction among left-leaning politicians, and how this crisis challenges the FOSS community's relationship to the wider world.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/445/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@wwahammy@social.treehouse.systems" }, { "room": "MCLD 2012", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2012" ], "start": "2026-08-08T10:45:00", "end": "2026-08-08T11:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Legal Issues", "conf_key": 347, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Anotomy of a 3D Printer AGPLv3 violation(s)", "authors": [ { "name": "Bradley M. K\u00fchn", "name_pronunciation": "BRAD-ley (rhymes with \"gladly\"), emm (the letter), kewwn (make a circle with your lips as you make the u sound w/ the umlaut). If you struggle with K\u00fchn, the english word \"keen\" said in the Queen's English is pretty close.", "pronouns": "he/them", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@bkuhn@copyleft.org", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/0580d7a67da1b15b1695edc4e22779f9?s=120&d=mp", "code": "635", "biography": "[Bradley M. K\u00fchn](https://ebb.org/bkuhn) is the [Policy Fellow and\r\nHacker-in-Residence](https://sfconservancy.org/about/staff/#bkuhn) at\r\n[Software Freedom Conservancy](https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer)\r\n(\"SFC\") and Co-Editor-in-Chief of [the copyleft-next\r\nlicense](https://next.copyleft.org). K\u00fchn began his work in the software\r\nfreedom movement as a volunteer in 1992 \u2014 as an early adopter of\r\nLinux-based systems and contributor to various FOSS projects, including\r\nPerl.\r\n\r\nK\u00fchn worked during the 1990s as a system administrator and software\r\ndeveloper for various companies, and also spent one year teaching high\r\nschool Advanced Placement Computer Science. As FSF's Executive Director\r\nfrom 2001\u20132005, K\u00fchn led FSF's GPL enforcement, launched its Associate\r\nMember program, and invented the copyleft network services clause found\r\nin the Affero GPL. K\u00fchn was SFC's primary volunteer from 2006\u20132010, and\r\nbecame its first staff person in 2011. K\u00fchn's work at SFC focuses on\r\n[enforcement of copyleft and the GPL\r\nAgreements](https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/), FOSS\r\nlicensing policy, and non-profit infrastructural solutions for FOSS.\r\nK\u00fchn holds a summa cum laude B.S. in Computer Science from [Loyola\r\nUniversity in\r\nMaryland](https://www.loyola.edu/academics/computer-science), and an\r\nM.S. in Computer Science from the [University of\r\nCincinnati](http://www.cs.uc.edu/). [K\u00fchn's Master's\r\nthesis](http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/articles/thesis/) discussed methods for\r\ndynamic interoperability of FOSS programming languages. K\u00fchn received\r\nthe 2012 Open Source Award, and the 2021 Award for the Advancement of\r\nFree Software --- both in recognition for his lifelong policy work on\r\ncopyleft licensing and its enforcement.\r\n\r\nK\u00fchn writes about his work on [SFC\\'s\r\nblog](https://sfconservancy.org/blog/?author=bkuhn) and as\r\n[\\@bkuhn@copyleft.org on the Fediverse (via\r\nMastodon)](https://fedi.copyleft.org/@bkuhn){rel=\"me\"}.", "username": "" }, { "name": "Denver Gingerich", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5ca795f06b3505f43bf7ba26fef37c7d?s=120&d=mp", "code": "634", "biography": "Denver is a software right-to-repair activist who is currently Director of Compliance at Software Freedom Conservancy, where he enforces software right-to-repair licenses such as the GPL, and is also a director of the worker co-operative that runs JMP.chat, a FOSS phone number (texting/calling) service. Denver writes free software in his spare time: his patches have been accepted into Wine, Linux, and wdiff. He gives presentations about digital civil rights and how to ensure FOSS remains sustainable as a community and financially, having spoken at conferences such as FOSSY, SCALE, the Canadian Repair Convention, WineConf, FOSDEM, Linux Plumbers Conference, SFSCON, CopyleftConf, Radical Networks, DebConf, Git Merge, CopyCamp Toronto, FOSSLC's Summercamp, and the Open Video Conference.", "username": "" }, { "name": "Karen Sandler", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "she/her", "twitter": "o0karen0o", "mastodon": "karen@floss.social", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5e77b6e5743dd274a0bc00806cb082de?s=120&d=mp", "code": "411", "biography": "Karen M. Sandler is an attorney and the executive director of Software Freedom Conservancy, a 501c3 nonprofit organization focused on ethical technology. As a patient deeply concerned with the technology in her own body, Karen is known as a cyborg lawyer for her advocacy for free software as a life-or-death issue, particularly in relation to the software on medical devices. She co-organizes Outreachy, the award-winning outreach program for people who face under-representation, systemic bias, or discrimination in tech. She is an adjunct Lecturer-In-Law of Columbia Law School and a visiting scholar at University of California Santa Cruz.\r\n\r\nPrior to joining Software Freedom Conservancy, Karen was the executive director of the GNOME Foundation. Before that, she was the general counsel of the Software Freedom Law Center. She began her career as a lawyer at Clifford Chance and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.\r\n\r\nKaren received her law degree from Columbia Law School where she was a James Kent Scholar and co-founder of the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review. She also holds a bachelor of science in engineering from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.\r\n\r\nSandler has won awards for her work on behalf of software freedom, including the O\u2019Reilly Open Source Award in 2011. She received an honorary doctorate from KU Leuven in 2023.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "SFC [launched the baltobu project](https://sfconservancy.org/news/2026/may/18/bambu-studio-3d-printer-agpl-violation-response/) in response to ongoing AGPLv3 violations the 3D printer manufacturer, Bambu Labs. Come to this session to learn about the details of the various AGPLv3 violations the approaches that SFC is taking to respond to them.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/432/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@bkuhn@copyleft.org" }, { "room": "CEME 1202", "rooms": [ "CEME 1202" ], "start": "2026-08-09T10:45:00", "end": "2026-08-09T11:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Wild Card", "conf_key": 403, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Open Cooperatives from HVAC to Media Libraries: An Economic Proposal for Better Tech", "authors": [ { "name": "Jason Prince", "name_pronunciation": "\"jay-sahn prints\" and the company name is pronounced \u201cyoo-morf-uh systems\u201d", "pronouns": "he/him", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@3000farad@indieweb.social", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/8b1a236b91a4b0a5c9f7b20c6b66c156?s=120&d=mp", "code": "615", "biography": "Jason Prince enjoys software, electronics, and all the other wild things humans do. He is a co-founder of [Umorpha Systems](https://www.umorpha.io/) and [OpenHVAC](https://openhvac.io/aboutus/). He lives in an HVAC lab in northern Colorado.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "If you, like me, feel that everything is suffering from an increasingly inescapable pressure to make someone else big bucks quick or perish, then I hope to offer you some uplifting ideas (including some refrigerant trivia and Building Science). Let's explore the synergy between libre-licensed biztech systems and employee-owned cooperatives, and how this combo can both be sustainable today and thrive in the future. We'll take a look at the ongoing transformation of the entire HVAC/R industry and see how building mechanical systems are primed for an open-source revolution. Then we'll push the principles further and imagine what's possible when the underlying economic engines are tuned for stable, sustainable improvement rather than growth. I'll introduce a concept for a \"local personal data system\" and how such an abstraction can tie together the technical and economic aspects of this potential future. Throughout, we'll ponder how we can all benefit from, and gain more agency over, our own work and devices (and indoor air quality). Libre Is The Only Way To Plug-n-Play, so let's build a tech economy to support that future - no catastrophic destruction required!", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/479/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@3000farad@indieweb.social" }, { "room": "MCLD 3038", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3038" ], "start": "2026-08-08T10:45:00", "end": "2026-08-08T11:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 331, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-07T11:30:00", "end": "2026-08-07T11:45:00", "duration": 15, "kind": "Break", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 269, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-09T11:30:00", "end": "2026-08-09T11:45:00", "duration": 15, "kind": "Break", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 404, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-08T11:30:00", "end": "2026-08-08T11:45:00", "duration": 15, "kind": "Break", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 270, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "MCLD 3038", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3038" ], "start": "2026-08-09T11:45:00", "end": "2026-08-09T12:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "XMPP", "conf_key": 406, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "UnifiedPush - Push notifications. Decentralized and Open Source", "authors": [ { "name": "Daniel Gultsch", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@daniel@gultsch.social", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e74ceb8c92b357e50d0e0f111c548ac4?s=120&d=mp", "code": "544", "biography": "Daniel has been a freelance software developer for almost 20 years. His main interests lie in open standards and communication protocols, including instant messaging, email, and the fediverse. He is the project lead for [Conversations](https://conversations.im) and [Ltt.rs](https://ltt.rs). Occasionally, he also dabbles in [security research](https://gultsch.de/tags/security/).\r\n\r\nMost of his open source projects are hosted on [Codeberg](https://codeberg.org/iNPUTmice/).\r\n\r\nHe is an active member of the [XMPP Standards Foundation](https://xmpp.org/about/xmpp-standards-foundation/) (XSF), serving as the chair of the council and as a member of the editor team.\r\n\r\nYou can learn more about him on his [website](https://gultsch.de) or his [Mastodon](https://gultsch.social/@daniel).", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "To understand how we can replace Google push notifications (FCM) with something open source and decentralized, we need to understand how they work and why they are needed in the first place. This talk explains the mechanics of push notifications and why, despite their potentially bad reputation, they are a more elegant solution than having every app maintain its own persistent server connection.\r\n\r\nOpen-source tools like microG can remove proprietary Google software from your Android phone, the actual notifications are still sent via Google's servers (Firebase Cloud Messaging).\r\n\r\n[UnifiedPush](https://unifiedpush.org/) is a framework that allows push notifications to be delivered in a decentralized manner or through self-hosted servers. UnifiedPush has a plugable architecture that allows push notifications to be delivered through different protocols (Websockets, SSE, XMPP) this talk will focus on why XMPP is particularly well suited to be used as a push protocol. \r\n\r\nNumerous open-source Android apps already support UnifiedPush, including [Tusky](https://tusky.app/), Ltt.rs, Fedilab, [DAVx\u2075](https://www.davx5.com/), Fennec, Element, and many more. \r\n\r\nThe presentation ends with a short demo on how to use the XMPP client Conversations to deliver push notifications to other apps on Android using UnifiedPush.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/372/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@daniel@gultsch.social" }, { "room": "CEME 1210", "rooms": [ "CEME 1210" ], "start": "2026-08-07T11:45:00", "end": "2026-08-07T12:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Linux Kernel", "conf_key": 305, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "RAID sucks (and what we can do about it)", "authors": [ { "name": "Christoph Hellwig", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5155a9f7b4ebf934b9ed078d70eba285?s=120&d=mp", "code": "617", "biography": "Christoph Hellwig has been working on the Linux kernel and various other Free Software projects since 1999. \r\n\r\nSince 2004 he has been running his own consulting business specializing in Linux file systems and storage, but also working on virtualization and the RISC-V open instruction set. He is an active participant in the NVMe technical working group and the IEFT Network File System Version 4\r\nworking group. He is one of the maintainers of the Linux NVMe driver, and one of the busiest contributors to the Linux kernel.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) has long been used to store large amounts of data while protecting against data loss\r\nand improving performance over that of a single disk.\r\n\r\nNaive RAID implementations always have had problems providing full data integrity in the face of system crashes or power failures, and cannot keep up with the increased performance of modern SSDs. Furthermore, no solution exists today to handle the sequential write constraint of zoned storage (e.g. SMR HDDs) which makes up an ever-increasing share of shipped storage capacity.\r\n\r\nThis talk unveils a new solution that supports full data integrity and supports all modern storage devices based on existing file system code in the Linux kernel.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/451/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-07T11:45:00", "end": "2026-08-07T12:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Open Source Governance and Community Stability", "conf_key": 286, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Art of the Fork: Reclaiming Community Trust", "authors": [ { "name": "Edward Ly", "name_pronunciation": "ED-ward LEE", "pronouns": "he/they", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e7388cdede23a3b3ff0a96860f1b768a?s=120&d=mp", "code": "550", "biography": "Dr. Edward Ly is a software engineer based in Portland, Oregon. In 2024, he obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Aizu in Japan, where he conducted research on machine learning in digital audio signal processing applications and published his work as free software. Since then, he has joined Nextcloud as part of a team that develops ethical AI solutions and other 3rd-party integrations for seamless collaboration and productivity. He has also spoken at various open source events including FOSDEM, LinuxFest Northwest, SeaGL, FOSSY, and more.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "On March 27th, 2026, a coalition of European companies including IONOS and Nextcloud announced \"[Euro-Office](https://github.com/Euro-Office),\" an AGPLv3-licensed fork of OnlyOffice. While public discourse has rightly focused on the legal nuances of the AGPLv3 license, this talk will rather focus on one of the project's other key objectives: liberating the codebase from a vendor accused of \"open-washing.\"\r\n\r\nUsing Euro-Office and other high-profile forks as case studies, we will examine the critical role forks play when corporate stewardship fails and trust breaks down. We will move beyond the headlines to dissect the distinct factors that determine whether a fork thrives or withers, revealing that community cohesion and governance are often more decisive than code quality alone. Finally, we will provide a practical framework for developers considering a fork, drawing on historical precedents to outline the risks, benefits, and essential strategies for building a sustainable community.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/404/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "CEME 1202", "rooms": [ "CEME 1202" ], "start": "2026-08-08T11:45:00", "end": "2026-08-08T12:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Fedicon", "conf_key": 306, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Decentralised Badges with BadgeFed", "authors": [ { "name": "Maho Pacheco", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/95c2d14dadfac4e4878d5bd7093f4406?s=120&d=mp", "code": "655", "biography": "", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "BadgeFed is an open-source digital badge platform that combines Open Badges and ActivityPub to bring credentials into the federated social web. In this talk, I\u2019ll show how nonprofits and communities can issue, share, and verify badges without vendor lock-in using a self-hostable .NET application that runs on Linux. We\u2019ll cover the architecture behind federated credentials, lessons learned building BadgeFed, and how decentralized recognition can make badges more portable, resilient, and community-owned.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/470/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 3038", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3038" ], "start": "2026-08-08T11:45:00", "end": "2026-08-08T12:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 326, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-09T11:45:00", "end": "2026-08-09T12:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Science of Community", "conf_key": 405, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Lessons from Three Feature Deployments in a Stewarded Open Source Project", "authors": [ { "name": "Matthew Gaughan", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "he/him", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5ac31bcad0ac6001ad8b27a23bd8a103?s=120&d=mp", "code": "597", "biography": "Matt Gaughan studies the rules and procedures that FLOSS contributors use to work together. He is a PhD candidate at Northwestern, where he draws from a variety of academic disciplines to look at FLOSS collaboration. He contributes to a few FLOSS projects in his free time and loves to build software that collects and organizes data. This will be his fourth FOSSY --- his favorite part of the conference is the hallway track, where he gets to hang out and learn from the conference community! He currently lives in Chicago, where he loves swimming in Lake Michigan.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "FOSS project stewards are increasingly responsible for technical development, maintenance, and project organization. The result are increasingly professionalized, centralized projects, where paid steward-affiliates drive project development while external contributors merely try to get involved. This is troubling for independent FOSS contributors, who provide critical labor despite often being pushed to the margins. How can independent contributors make their voice heard in stewarded project development? How can stewards organize project procedures for more harmonious collaboration? In this talk, I offer takeaways and findings from studying three feature deployments in MediaWiki, the wiki framework stewarded by the Wikimedia Foundation.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/455/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 3002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3002" ], "start": "2026-08-08T11:45:00", "end": "2026-08-08T12:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "AI", "conf_key": 337, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "From Prompts to Runtime Signals: Making Open-Source AI Systems More Trustworthy", "authors": [ { "name": "Rishabh Banga", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "BangaRishabh", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/290552c1e1b94ec2889f92622600a1dd?s=120&d=mp", "code": "580", "biography": "Rishabh Banga is an AI product leader, builder, and ecosystem contributor whose work sits at the intersection of applied AI, product systems, and real-world execution. Over the past decade, he has built and led products across startups, enterprise platforms, and community-driven technology ecosystems, with a focus on making complex systems practical, reliable, and usable beyond demos.\r\n\r\nRishabh has also volunteered his time to give back through judging, mentorship, and founder support across initiatives such as MIT $100K, MIT Solve, the Presidential AI Challenge, and the Verizon Disaster Resilience Accelerator. Across developer, student, and startup ecosystems including Hacker\u2019s Tribe, IntelliGen, and Intel programs, he has helped build communities and trained 5.8K+ students and professionals across AI, IoT, and product development.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Open-source AI systems are getting easier to assemble: pick a model, add retrieval, wire up a few tools, and you can get something impressive working quickly. But getting that same system to behave reliably in production is a different problem. This talk is about the gap between \u201cit works in a demo\u201d and \u201cit can be trusted in use.\u201d\r\n\r\nAttendees will leave with a clearer way to think about trust layers for open-source AI systems, where these systems tend to fail in practice, and what design patterns can make them more usable beyond demos.\r\n\r\nUsing lessons from building applied AI systems, I\u2019ll show why prompts alone are not enough, why offline evaluations often miss real-world failure modes, and why trust in AI systems has to be treated as a systems problem rather than just a model problem. The session will focus on practical ways to make open-source AI workflows more trustworthy through runtime signals such as retrieval quality checks, confidence proxies, verification layers, fallback logic, and failure detection across multi-step workflows.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/441/", "cancelled": false, "twitter_id": "BangaRishabh" }, { "room": "MCLD 2012", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2012" ], "start": "2026-08-08T11:45:00", "end": "2026-08-08T12:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Legal Issues", "conf_key": 348, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "YASF: or Yet another SBOM format", "authors": [ { "name": "Sen Hastings", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "they/them", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "sen@gnulinux.club", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/64b686b9b099630b55aaa85b70a07876?s=120&d=mp", "code": "596", "biography": "Sen is a \"jack-of-all-trades\" software developer and longtime linux hobbyist with a focus on embedded linux systems, they are also an active contributor to the buildroot mailing list.\r\n\r\nIn everything from front/backend web development to init systems, they strive for simplicity and legibility, as they are the primary tools in facilitating open collaboration and development.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "SBOMs, or software bills of materials are an important tool for application developers to ensure security and licence compliance at scale, especially now due to the rise of Software supply chain attacks.\r\nImplementing them can be a daunting task however, especially for developers that are new to the game.\r\nWell, what better way to learn than by creating A WHOLE NEW FORMAT FOR ONE (in YAML, no less!)", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/429/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "sen@gnulinux.club" }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-08T11:45:00", "end": "2026-08-08T12:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Camp KDE", "conf_key": 354, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Why Ultramarine Chose Plasma", "authors": [ { "name": "Jaiden Riordan", "name_pronunciation": "Jay-den Rear-den", "pronouns": "she/they", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/42ae289af8ce5200f0dc6cd99fdae3dd?s=120&d=mp", "code": "598", "biography": "**Jaiden Riordan** is COO and co-founder of Fyra Labs, overseeing the day-to-day and assisting in shaping the direction of the company.\r\n\r\nJaiden got her start on a Raspberry Pi 3 and has grown her collection to a fleet of odd computers now totaling upwards of 50. With 10 years in the space, and 6 years contributing professionally, she is deeply involved in Fyra's projects, primarily directing hardware enablement efforts in Ultramarine Linux and Terra.\r\n\r\nA lifelong Minnesotan and proud Saint Paulite, Jaiden is pursuing her Master of Business Administration at Metropolitan State University with a focus on unique management structures and economics research centering around stimulus transmission.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "In Ultramarine 43, we switched our recommended Edition to Plasma, retiring Budgie's place as Flagship Edition and killing that brand. \r\n\r\nRetiring Flagship was the easy part, figuring out what to replace it with is the far more interesting story we're here to tell.\r\n\r\nIn this talk, I'll walk through the technical and UX decisions we made along the way. From hours of tinkering, to finding what truly did work for users, and how Plasma made the case for itself.\r\n\r\nThe switch to Plasma wasn't just the right call, but the only one, let's find out why.\r\n\r\nAlso I'll mention that Ultramarine Plasma Edition is pretty awesome a couple times, and I'll have stickers, there's no reason not to come.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/394/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 3002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3002" ], "start": "2026-08-09T11:45:00", "end": "2026-08-09T12:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "AI", "conf_key": 407, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Copyright is bad, actually, and maybe not all the LLMs are", "authors": [ { "name": "Matthew Garrett", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "he/him", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@mjg59@nondeterministic.computer", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/880491dea715eedb91f4a66686d8e355?s=120&d=mp", "code": "628", "biography": "Matthew has spent too much time with computers. He enjoys being at conferences with similarly afflicted individuals in order to bond over the shared pain. He is passionate about free software and individual liberty, and is also fascinated about ways we can broaden the autonomy that free software brings to users.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "The rise of LLMs has resulted in a range of awful real world outcomes - volunteer run services brought to their knees by scrapers, creative workers being pushed out of jobs by machines doing their work less well, data center construction draining local resources. And yet the reality is that, in the right hands, they can be useful, but the reaction of the free software community has largely been focused on the impact of copyright on their output.\r\n\r\nLet's look back at the beginning of the free software scene, a time where it wasn't even clear that software could be copyrighted. Let's think about our ideals. Let's consider what the optimal end goals are. And let's think about whether there's an ethical path to enable this technology to be usable by end users in a way that enhance their freedom without diminishing free software and without destroying the planet in the process.\r\n\r\n(The answer might be no! That's ok! I am trying to make a conversation happen)", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/434/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@mjg59@nondeterministic.computer" }, { "room": "MCLD 2012", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2012" ], "start": "2026-08-09T11:45:00", "end": "2026-08-09T12:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 408, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "CEME 1202", "rooms": [ "CEME 1202" ], "start": "2026-08-09T11:45:00", "end": "2026-08-09T12:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Wild Card", "conf_key": 409, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "The Cathedral and the Bizarre II: Branches of Faith or, Committing Code Not Sins", "authors": [ { "name": "Toby Betts", "name_pronunciation": "TOE-bee bets", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/4ff768bee24c09f7ef8dfde4c4e9d184?s=120&d=mp", "code": "581", "biography": "Toby Betts has been breaking and, when possible, fixing computers since childhood. He has worked as a system administrator, a service engineer, a site reliability engineer, incident response engineer, and a free and open source software consultant for mid- to large-sized businesses for over 25 years. His main interests are system security, free cryptography, and fun file systems.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Git is a major part of modern software development. It is the de facto open source version control platform, enabling developers worldwide to work concurrently without conflicts. Its robust branching and merging features facilitate both parallel development and efficient project management in a culture that encourages the use of Git as a universal tool for managing code in many varied settings and for adapting your dev process to fit its design. This talk will outline the TempleOS development environment, tips and tricks for writing software in the HolyC programming language, and how an operating system without a network stack can still follow modern development practices.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/418/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "CEME 1212", "rooms": [ "CEME 1212" ], "start": "2026-08-07T11:45:00", "end": "2026-08-07T12:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Toolchain and Other Developer Tools", "conf_key": 292, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "New developments in pkgconf 3.0", "authors": [ { "name": "Ariadne Conill", "name_pronunciation": "air-ee-ad-nee", "pronouns": "she/her or they/them", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "ariadne@social.treehouse.systems", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/76154427af426fe8a4eacae47c9f2401?s=120&d=mp", "code": "645", "biography": "Ariadne is a free software developer and systems architect who has been building FOSS infrastructure for over two decades. She is a longtime contributor to Alpine Linux maintaining the GNU toolchain packages in Alpine and is also the author of pkgconf, libucontext, and ifupdown-ng. Her work focuses on Linux systems, packaging, containers, and the infrastructure that connects them. She currently serves as co-founder and Distinguished Engineer at Edera.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "pkgconf is the defacto implementation of the pkg-config system, used in most FOSS operating systems to manage dependencies of C and C++ software.\r\n\r\nLast year, at SeaGL, I presented a talk about pkgconf's history and overall direction. By the time this talk is given, pkgconf 3.0 will have been released. What parts of the roadmap have been realized? What features outside the roadmap have been added? And finally, how can we further improve the pkg-config system for developers?", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/387/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "ariadne@social.treehouse.systems" }, { "room": "MCLD 2018", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2018" ], "start": "2026-08-07T11:45:00", "end": "2026-08-07T12:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Fedicon", "conf_key": 298, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Herding Cats: Two years of building on AP", "authors": [ { "name": "Julian Lam", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "julian@activitypub.space", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/22947111265b6570f10db18be78259a7?s=120&d=mp", "code": "639", "biography": "Julian is a full-stack developer working in the open social web and community building space. He founded NodeBB Inc., a modern forum software platform, since 2014, and has been an outspoken champion for forum-style asynchronous communication styles ever since. In 2023, NodeBB released its ActivityPub integration, and with it, forum platforms officially joined the fediverse.\r\n\r\nFor fun, Julian rock climbs, conducts concert bands, and plays the saxophone. He can be easily swayed with a good shawarma.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "A reflection on NodeBB's two-year journey building out its ActivityPub integration. Julian will talk about the current state of the developer community, lessons learned, and the friends made along the way. Topics will touch on extending the ActivityPub specification, funding your project in Canada and abroad, and a \"State of the Fediverse\" review.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/461/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "julian@activitypub.space" }, { "room": "MCLD 2012", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2012" ], "start": "2026-08-07T11:45:00", "end": "2026-08-07T12:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Legal Issues", "conf_key": 411, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "It Was BSD All Along: Relicensing PHP After 30 Years", "authors": [ { "name": "Ben Ramsey", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "he/him/his", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@ramsey@phpc.social", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/a0fa77843de8a4a2265bb939180a384b?s=120&d=mp", "code": "640", "biography": "Ben is a seasoned software engineer with 25+ years of experience in web applications. As a Senior Staff Software Engineer at Intuit Mailchimp, he leads the API Core team managing the Mailchimp public API. A passionate advocate for open source, Ben is a PHP release manager, creator of the ramsey/uuid library, and an active community contributor. A prolific writer and speaker, he has contributed to books, articles, and conferences. Connect with him on the web at [ben.ramsey.dev](https://ben.ramsey.dev) or on the Fediverse at [@ramsey@phpc.social](https://phpc.social/@ramsey).", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "In early 2020, someone asked a question on a PHP mailing list that I couldn't stop thinking about. Their employer only allowed OSI-approved licenses, and while php.net claimed the PHP License 3.01 was approved, the OSI's own website showed approval only for version 3.0. I volunteered to sort it out, and a few months later the OSI granted legacy approval for 3.01. But the question stuck with me, and the closer I looked, the stranger PHP's licensing history got.\r\n\r\nPHP didn't always have its own license. It began under the GPL, became dual-licensed, then settled into the custom PHP and Zend Engine licenses it kept for over two decades. Neither was GPL-compatible; one was never OSI-approved. Yet strip away the conditions specific to the PHP Group and Zend, and what remains is, almost word for word, BSD-3-Clause. Making it official meant answering a question with no obvious answer: who has the authority to relicense a 30-year-old language whose contributors never signed an agreement?\r\n\r\nThis is the story of how I answered that question and steered the new license through, and what it taught me about copyright, license stewardship, and the distance between what a license intends and what it says. It's one project's story, not a how-to guide\u2014every situation is different, and I'm not a lawyer\u2014but PHP's is a strange and instructive one, and a window into how tangled software licensing can be.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/431/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@ramsey@phpc.social" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-09T12:30:00", "end": "2026-08-09T13:45:00", "duration": 75, "kind": "Lunch break (on your own)", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 226, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Lunch break (on your own)" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-08T12:30:00", "end": "2026-08-08T14:00:00", "duration": 90, "kind": "Lunch break (on your own)", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 225, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Lunch break (on your own)" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-07T12:30:00", "end": "2026-08-07T14:00:00", "duration": 90, "kind": "Lunch break (on your own)", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 224, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Lunch break (on your own)" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-06T13:45:00", "end": "2026-08-06T14:00:00", "duration": 15, "kind": "Opening Remarks", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 227, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Opening Remarks" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-09T13:45:00", "end": "2026-08-09T14:00:00", "duration": 15, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 397, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "MCLD 3038", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3038" ], "start": "2026-08-06T14:00:00", "end": "2026-08-06T14:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Databases", "conf_key": 240, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Real-time Monitoring and Reporting your Databases", "authors": [ { "name": "Syed Usman Ahmad", "name_pronunciation": "Usman", "pronouns": "he/him", "twitter": "usahmad87", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/a49c2b451c6a45ec9fb96affa87aa5ed?s=120&d=mp", "code": "582", "biography": "Usman is a Staff Developer Advocate at Grafana Labs from Nuremberg, Germany. He works with the Open Source community on the community forum, GitHub and Slack.\r\n\r\nHe has over 15 years of experience in the Tech Industry where he served multiple customers all over Europe, US, Japan, etc.\r\n\r\nHe is an active international public speaker participating in multiple conferences and events. Also, he is the owner of the **[FreeLinuxTutorials](https://www.youtube.com/@freelinuxtutorials)** YouTube channel where he shares educational content around Linux and Open Source Tools.\r\n\r\nIn his free time, Usman likes to spend time with his family, go out on occasional traveling and play games or read comics.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Learn the art to level up your Database skills and view real-time data in a visualize format and create dashboards that represent your business KPIs and metrics that matters inside Grafana as a complete Observability solution. You will learn from databases to logs, metrics and so on.\r\n\r\nWhether you are just starting your career as a database user for data analytics or already an expert Database Administrator (DBA) to detect the overall performance or a product manager to view the usage of the user data, you need multiple tools and techniques to manipulate data into visual metrics to track the most important KPIs in your organization. However, sharing such information with others can be challenging as it requires the same skills and tools to get the same results.\r\n\r\nIn this talk, we will demonstrate an example of how you can visualize and monitor both time-series or cross-sectional data in PostgreSQL/MySQL to represent it in various visualization formats and get key metrics or find trends by using Grafana dashboards. Also, we will gain insight into details by applying Alerting rules to trigger notifications for any unexpected results and send it to your entire team.\r\n\r\nIt will be an introduction to the Grafana Dashboards and also an excellent opportunity to learn more about utilizing advanced options to effectively extract and represent meaningful data in a human readable visualization.\r\n\r\nJoin us to learn more about Grafana dashboards, community contributions and share your feedback and suggestions!", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/399/", "cancelled": false, "twitter_id": "usahmad87" }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-06T14:00:00", "end": "2026-08-06T14:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Open Source Governance and Community Stability", "conf_key": 281, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "From First PR to Release Manager: A Path into Open Source", "authors": [ { "name": "Daniel Scherzer", "name_pronunciation": "Daniel SURE-zer", "pronouns": "he/him", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/382bf77b42c2e0a15f6ee89bb1aff096?s=120&d=mp", "code": "642", "biography": "Daniel is an open source contributor specializing in PHP and its ecosystem. He is a PHP core developer, maintains the built in reflection extension, and serves as a release manager for PHP 8.5 and PHP 8.6. See more at https://scherzer.dev.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Contributing to a big project, whether it be a programming language developed on GitHub (e.g. PHP or Rust) or a popular framework or package (e.g. PHP's Symfony or Rust's bitflags) can seem intimidating at first. Daniel's first contribution to PHP was a typo fix for a test on August 28, 2024. Less than a month later, on September 22, someone already suggested that Daniel request merge access!\r\n\r\nSince then, Daniel has written multiple RFCs (including both accepted and rejected proposals) for PHP, successfully applied for merge access, and taken on the responsibilities of being one of the Release Managers for PHP 8.5 and PHP 8.6. Outside of PHP, Daniel has also become a contributor to other open source libraries hosted on GitHub.\r\n\r\nIn this talk, Daniel will walk through his experience contributing to open source and the lessons learned along the way. These lessons apply to any project looking for contributors, and any contributor looking for projects.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/410/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "CEME 1212", "rooms": [ "CEME 1212" ], "start": "2026-08-06T14:00:00", "end": "2026-08-06T14:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 315, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "MCLD 3014", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3014" ], "start": "2026-08-06T14:00:00", "end": "2026-08-06T14:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Right to Repair", "conf_key": 319, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Reverse engineering binary blobs on mobile", "authors": [ { "name": "Rob Savoye", "name_pronunciation": "Savoye, the old Savoye Truffle song, the Savoy Hotel, etc...", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/b00a97b8c2fd50259e8333a55ca3119d?s=120&d=mp", "code": "627", "biography": "Rob is a long-time GNU developer since the 1980s, primarily working on the GNU Toolchain with a focus on cross compilation and embedded systems. Other GNU projects are DejaGnu and Gnash. Currently working on librephone, reverse engineering the binary blobs on mobile devices. Also deeply involved with OpenStreetMap.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "This talk covers the current progress in successfully reverse engineering the binary blobs on mobile devices, with the longer term goal of creating FOSS replacements. Topics discussed are how the radio subsystem functions, the protocol layers, and identifying the functionality of many of the binary blobs, and how the librephone project will replace them utilizing clean room techniques.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/437/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 3002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3002" ], "start": "2026-08-08T14:00:00", "end": "2026-08-08T14:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "AI", "conf_key": 339, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Dude, where did my tokens go?", "authors": [ { "name": "Nikola Grcevski", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@vivaboredom", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ffb963c40ca976da711c063bf1943691?s=120&d=mp", "code": "623", "biography": "Nikola Grcevski has worked as a software engineer for more than 20 years, mostly in the field of compilers, managed runtimes and performance optimization. Most recently he's working on low level application instrumentation with eBPF at Grafana Labs. He's currently a maintainer of two OpenTelemetry projects: OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation and OpenTelemetry Injector.", "username": "" }, { "name": "Rafael Roquetto", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ed14089a2b0cffc5b5c1aefc92be29c1?s=120&d=mp", "code": "624", "biography": "Rafael is a software engineer who has been building systems software in C++ and contributing to open source projects since 2005. He is a maintainer of OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation (OBI), where he works on eBPF-based application observability and auto-instrumentation. Prior to OBI, he contributed to Grafana Beyla before its donation to the OpenTelemetry project.\r\n\r\nEarlier in his career, Rafael worked extensively with the Qt project, serving as the maintainer of Qt's QNX integration plugin and contributing to QtCore, QtMultimedia, Qt Creator, and qmake. While at Blackmagic Design, he architected a declarative UI framework for the company's embedded real-time operating systems, laying the foundation for interfaces used across products including digital cinema cameras and ATEM switchers.\r\n\r\nHis work has often sat at the boundary between applications and operating systems, spanning embedded user interfaces, developer tools, kernel-level instrumentation, and observability systems that help explain what software is really doing.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "There\u2019s nothing easy about GenAI Observability. GenAI observability is a moving target, new frameworks and SDKs appear daily, while organizations are rapidly integrating AI into their products. So how does instrumentation keep up with this ever expanding ecosystem of tools and libraries? \r\n\r\nWhile there are many new frameworks, libraries and SDKs to build GenAI capabilities in applications, there are only a handful of GenAI vendors that all these libraries use. In this talk, we show how recent updates to OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation enable zero-effort, cross-language GenAI observability by capturing signals at the protocol level, regardless of the libraries or frameworks in use. \r\n\r\nWe\u2019ll demo how to capture GenAI signals for core AI agent and MCP server operation types, e.g. tool call, embedding, rerank, agent invocation, prompt management and resource access, across multiple GenAI vendors all with OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation and 100% programming language agnostic.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/440/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@vivaboredom" }, { "room": "MCLD 3038", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3038" ], "start": "2026-08-08T14:00:00", "end": "2026-08-08T14:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "XMPP", "conf_key": 333, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Encrypted messaging interoperability with hybrid bridges in XMPP", "authors": [ { "name": "Marvin W.", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "he/him, they/them", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@larma@mastodon.social", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/6686d0e828a3927f07f44b93ce1224fb?s=120&d=mp", "code": "609", "biography": "Marvin is a free software developer focusing on mobile operating systems and federated instant messaging. He created and maintains microG, a free software replacement for Google Play Services. He's also a member of the council of the XMPP Standards Foundation and a core developer of the XMPP client Dino.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "XMPP was and still is the major open standard for federated instant messaging, originally designed to allow bridging between existing networks. Due to the increased complexity of messaging protocols, bridging is less prominent for instant messaging and disabling end-to-end encryption is usually a drawback when sending messages across messengers.\r\n\r\nIn this talk I will show how bridges worked traditionally and why this can't be done for end-to-end encrypted messaging. I will then introduce the concept of hybrid bridges, bridges that operate in parts on server and client, and thus allow to maintain end-to-end encryption. And I will explain how this related MLS and MIMI, technologies that I introduced in my last years FOSSY talk.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/374/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@larma@mastodon.social" }, { "room": "MCLD 2018", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2018" ], "start": "2026-08-06T14:00:00", "end": "2026-08-06T14:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "FOSS and Research Computing", "conf_key": 277, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Breaking Barriers in High-Performance Computing: Open OnDemand as a Catalyst for Research Innovation", "authors": [ { "name": "Dr. Tannistha Nandi", "name_pronunciation": "Tannistha", "pronouns": "She/Her", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/58785d53a75494864e5c19e887904745?s=120&d=mp", "code": "559", "biography": "Dr. Tannistha Nandi is a member of the Advanced Research Computing (ARC) team at the University of British Columbia. She holds a PhD in Genomics and Bioinformatics and brings extensive experience in research and data science from her work at the Genome Institute of Singapore and the University of Calgary.\r\nDr. Nandi is dedicated to enabling researchers to achieve their scientific goals by bridging advanced computing with data-intensive research. She collaborates closely with the research community to provide high-performance computing (HPC) consultations, support complex software environments, and advance research data management practices. Her work focuses on understanding research needs and translating them into effective, data-driven, and high-throughput computational solutions, empowering innovation across disciplines.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Open OnDemand (OOD) represents a paradigm shift in high-performance computing (HPC) accessibility, transforming how researchers, scientists, clinicians, and students leverage computational resources for big data projects. For years, the command-line interface has been a significant barrier to entry, preventing many domain experts from fully utilizing HPC capabilities. Open OnDemand eliminates this obstacle by providing an intuitive web-based portal that democratizes access to powerful computing infrastructure without requiring extensive technical expertise.\r\nAt the University of British Columbia, the Advanced Research Computing (ARC) team has embraced this open-source platform, deploying it across our HPC clusters to serve the diverse research community. Our implementation extends beyond basic access, we have curated an extensive application ecosystem spanning general-purpose tools like RStudio, Jupyter notebooks, and cluster desktops, alongside specialized domain-specific software for genomics, bioinformatics, and computational chemistry. This comprehensive suite enables researchers to focus on their science rather than wrestling with technical complexity.\r\nThe graphical user interface has unlocked particularly transformative capabilities in scientific visualization, allowing researchers to interactively explore complex datasets and generate insights that were previously difficult or impossible to achieve through command-line workflows alone. This visual paradigm shift has accelerated discovery across multiple disciplines.\r\nBeyond local implementation, UBC ARC actively contributes to the global OOD open-source community through the Appverse repository, sharing our custom applications and configurations. This bidirectional engagement consuming and contributing exemplifies the collaborative spirit of open-source development and ensures sustainable innovation in research computing infrastructure.\r\nThis talk will showcase specific applications we have deployed, demonstrate real-world research impacts at UBC, and discuss our philosophy of giving back to the open-source ecosystem that enables our mission to empower researchers and advance scientific discovery.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/420/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 2018", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2018" ], "start": "2026-08-07T14:00:00", "end": "2026-08-07T14:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 299, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "CEME 1202", "rooms": [ "CEME 1202" ], "start": "2026-08-08T14:00:00", "end": "2026-08-08T14:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Fedicon", "conf_key": 310, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Off-Grid Inter-Neighborhood Networks", "authors": [ { "name": "Vagrant Cascadian", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "they/them or none", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@vagrantc@floss.social", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/4552bdb4826cf64bd57d39d117bbc2ae?s=120&d=mp", "code": "613", "biography": "Vagrant strives to make Reproducible Builds a best practices reality for everyone. Vagrant discovered free software late last millennium and has been contributing to free software since the beginning of this millennium. A long-time Debian Developer and contributor to Guix, tinkering with ARM and RISC-V systems, Vagrant contrasts spending too much time on computers with aikido, bicycle commuting and a DIY solar hobby.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "What if we developed a Federated network that was intentionally... not connected to the internet?\r\n\r\nAn off-line first, off-grid network...\r\n\r\nWhere limited range and high degrees of locality were a feature to help build connections between neighbors?\r\n\r\nWhere slow and possibly infrequent, sporadic connectivity between neighborhoods was a design intention, maybe even a special occasion?\r\n\r\nWhere information could be delivered by bicycle, or seriously, why not carrier pidgeon?\r\n\r\nThere is free software to make this possible already, time to put the pieces together!", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/459/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@vagrantc@floss.social" }, { "room": "MCLD 3002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3002" ], "start": "2026-08-09T14:00:00", "end": "2026-08-09T14:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "AI", "conf_key": 376, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Toward Ethical Use of LLM-gen-AI to advance FOSS", "authors": [ { "name": "Bradley M. K\u00fchn", "name_pronunciation": "BRAD-ley (rhymes with \"gladly\"), emm (the letter), kewwn (make a circle with your lips as you make the u sound w/ the umlaut). If you struggle with K\u00fchn, the english word \"keen\" said in the Queen's English is pretty close.", "pronouns": "he/them", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@bkuhn@copyleft.org", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/0580d7a67da1b15b1695edc4e22779f9?s=120&d=mp", "code": "635", "biography": "[Bradley M. K\u00fchn](https://ebb.org/bkuhn) is the [Policy Fellow and\r\nHacker-in-Residence](https://sfconservancy.org/about/staff/#bkuhn) at\r\n[Software Freedom Conservancy](https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer)\r\n(\"SFC\") and Co-Editor-in-Chief of [the copyleft-next\r\nlicense](https://next.copyleft.org). K\u00fchn began his work in the software\r\nfreedom movement as a volunteer in 1992 \u2014 as an early adopter of\r\nLinux-based systems and contributor to various FOSS projects, including\r\nPerl.\r\n\r\nK\u00fchn worked during the 1990s as a system administrator and software\r\ndeveloper for various companies, and also spent one year teaching high\r\nschool Advanced Placement Computer Science. As FSF's Executive Director\r\nfrom 2001\u20132005, K\u00fchn led FSF's GPL enforcement, launched its Associate\r\nMember program, and invented the copyleft network services clause found\r\nin the Affero GPL. K\u00fchn was SFC's primary volunteer from 2006\u20132010, and\r\nbecame its first staff person in 2011. K\u00fchn's work at SFC focuses on\r\n[enforcement of copyleft and the GPL\r\nAgreements](https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/), FOSS\r\nlicensing policy, and non-profit infrastructural solutions for FOSS.\r\nK\u00fchn holds a summa cum laude B.S. in Computer Science from [Loyola\r\nUniversity in\r\nMaryland](https://www.loyola.edu/academics/computer-science), and an\r\nM.S. in Computer Science from the [University of\r\nCincinnati](http://www.cs.uc.edu/). [K\u00fchn's Master's\r\nthesis](http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/articles/thesis/) discussed methods for\r\ndynamic interoperability of FOSS programming languages. K\u00fchn received\r\nthe 2012 Open Source Award, and the 2021 Award for the Advancement of\r\nFree Software --- both in recognition for his lifelong policy work on\r\ncopyleft licensing and its enforcement.\r\n\r\nK\u00fchn writes about his work on [SFC\\'s\r\nblog](https://sfconservancy.org/blog/?author=bkuhn) and as\r\n[\\@bkuhn@copyleft.org on the Fediverse (via\r\nMastodon)](https://fedi.copyleft.org/@bkuhn){rel=\"me\"}.", "username": "" }, { "name": "Denver Gingerich", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5ca795f06b3505f43bf7ba26fef37c7d?s=120&d=mp", "code": "634", "biography": "Denver is a software right-to-repair activist who is currently Director of Compliance at Software Freedom Conservancy, where he enforces software right-to-repair licenses such as the GPL, and is also a director of the worker co-operative that runs JMP.chat, a FOSS phone number (texting/calling) service. Denver writes free software in his spare time: his patches have been accepted into Wine, Linux, and wdiff. He gives presentations about digital civil rights and how to ensure FOSS remains sustainable as a community and financially, having spoken at conferences such as FOSSY, SCALE, the Canadian Repair Convention, WineConf, FOSDEM, Linux Plumbers Conference, SFSCON, CopyleftConf, Radical Networks, DebConf, Git Merge, CopyCamp Toronto, FOSSLC's Summercamp, and the Open Video Conference.", "username": "" }, { "name": "Karen Sandler", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "she/her", "twitter": "o0karen0o", "mastodon": "karen@floss.social", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5e77b6e5743dd274a0bc00806cb082de?s=120&d=mp", "code": "411", "biography": "Karen M. Sandler is an attorney and the executive director of Software Freedom Conservancy, a 501c3 nonprofit organization focused on ethical technology. As a patient deeply concerned with the technology in her own body, Karen is known as a cyborg lawyer for her advocacy for free software as a life-or-death issue, particularly in relation to the software on medical devices. She co-organizes Outreachy, the award-winning outreach program for people who face under-representation, systemic bias, or discrimination in tech. She is an adjunct Lecturer-In-Law of Columbia Law School and a visiting scholar at University of California Santa Cruz.\r\n\r\nPrior to joining Software Freedom Conservancy, Karen was the executive director of the GNOME Foundation. Before that, she was the general counsel of the Software Freedom Law Center. She began her career as a lawyer at Clifford Chance and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.\r\n\r\nKaren received her law degree from Columbia Law School where she was a James Kent Scholar and co-founder of the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review. She also holds a bachelor of science in engineering from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.\r\n\r\nSandler has won awards for her work on behalf of software freedom, including the O\u2019Reilly Open Source Award in 2011. She received an honorary doctorate from KU Leuven in 2023.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "This panel will consider the fundamental question of use of (probably proprietary) use of LLM-backed generative AI systems to assist in the production, improvement, and refinement of FOSS.\r\n\r\nMany on the panel were involved in the drafting of [SFC's Recommendations When Using LLM-backed generative AI systems for FOSS contributions](FIXME_LINK_NOT_PUBLIC_AT_TIME_OF_TALK_SUBMISSION), and they welcome inquisitive and lively discussion and rigorous questions from the audience.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/435/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@bkuhn@copyleft.org" }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-07T14:00:00", "end": "2026-08-07T14:20:00", "duration": 20, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Open Source Governance and Community Stability", "conf_key": 287, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Uncharted: Lessons from the First University System OSPO Network", "authors": [ { "name": "Stephanie Lieggi", "name_pronunciation": "STEF-uh-nee lee-EH-jee", "pronouns": "She / her", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/9aa59dcf2fbc1b3642f73d14332a61ad?s=120&d=mp", "code": "606", "biography": "Stephanie Lieggi is the Executive Director of the Center for Research in Open Source Software (CROSS) at University of California, Santa Cruz. She supports academic-based open source projects and aims to create a sustainable contributor base through the establishment of hands-on mentorship programs, including the Open Source Research Experience (OSRE) Programs. Since 2022 her role has also helped lead the UCSC newly formed Open Source Program Office (OSPO), supported by a grant from the Alfred P Sloan Foundation. Most recently, Stephanie led the effort to build a system-wide network of OSPOs at the University of California, securing financial support for building the network from the Sloan Foundation in Spring 2024. Stephanie was the co-PI on UCSC\u2019s first US National Science Foundation's Pathways to Enable Open Source Ecosystem (POSE) grant, which has enabled exploration into successful models for building sustainable open source projects at universities. Prior to starting at CROSS, Stephanie was a senior researcher and adjunct professor at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, part of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, where she researched the intersection of national security and global trade.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "n 2024, campuses from the UC system proposed an ambitious idea: building the first systemwide Open Source Program Office (OSPO) network across multiple University of California campuses. Our team had a plan, Sloan Foundation funding, and the experience of UC Santa Cruz's pioneering campus OSPO \u2014 what we lacked was any concrete roadmap drawn by anyone who had done it before. This session is an update on where we are now \u2014 two years in and a little bit wiser. The presenter, who has chaired the UC Network since its inception, will share what has worked, what required course corrections, and what remains genuinely hard. Our goal is that our experience \u2014 the detours as much as the progress \u2014 provides a practical guide for others building similar efforts. This talk will highlight the critical role of groups like CURIOSS, the global community of university and research institute OSPOs \u2014 because some of the challenges we face aren't unique to UC, even if the scale is. Academic open source has enormous unrealized potential. Projects like Ceph, RISC-V, and Jupyter show what's possible when university research finds its way to broader adoption and sustainability. Two years in, we have a clearer picture of both how to do that and how much work remains.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/413/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "CEME 1212", "rooms": [ "CEME 1212" ], "start": "2026-08-07T14:00:00", "end": "2026-08-07T14:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Toolchain and Other Developer Tools", "conf_key": 293, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "SFrame V3: Towards efficient stack-tracing in GNU/Linux", "authors": [ { "name": "Indu Bhagat", "name_pronunciation": "In-doo Bhuh-gut", "pronouns": "She/Her", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/99498c46de68beaff70d9c53f249b1db?s=120&d=mp", "code": "633", "biography": "Indu Bhagat has been a regular contributor to the various GNU Toolchain components over the last few years. She also helps maintain SFrame, CTF/BTF formats in the GNU Toolchain.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "First released in early 2023, SFrame (Simple Frame) offers a fast and efficient method for stack tracing without relying on frame pointers. A new version of the format, SFrame V3, was released with Binutils 2.46 (February 2026). Compared to V2, it features support for text sizes greater than 2GiB, more flexibility in representing topmost frames, support for marking outermost frames, and support for marking signal trampolines, among other improvements.\r\n\r\nIn this talk, we will introduce the format and explore how it interfaces with the Linux kernel\u2019s deferred unwinder infrastructure (allowing kernel tools like perf and other tracing mechanisms to safely read user-space stacks and get reliable user-space stack traces quickly). We will also examine the ongoing integration efforts to bring SFrame-based stack tracing holistically to user space.\r\n\r\nFinally, we will map out the missing pieces and call upon the community to help drive the seamless, distro-wide adoption we need to finally move away from Frame Pointers and reclaim CPU performance on some targets.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/386/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "CEME 1210", "rooms": [ "CEME 1210" ], "start": "2026-08-07T14:00:00", "end": "2026-08-07T14:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Linux Kernel", "conf_key": 308, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "From Zero to Linux Kernel Contributor: 750+ Patches Later", "authors": [ { "name": "Thorsten Blum", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/56d55194a2f1b11bb9798938125b33c2?s=120&d=mp", "code": "601", "biography": "Thorsten is a professional software developer and CEO of Blumbird GmbH, a boutique technology consulting company based in Munich, Germany. In 2024, he began contributing to the Linux kernel, nearly 30 years after first using Linux. In his spare time, Thorsten enjoys hiking and is currently pursuing his ham radio license.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Contributing to the Linux kernel can be intimidating at first, but getting started and having your patches accepted into the mainline kernel is often easier than you might think. In this talk, I will share practical tips and learnings from submitting over 750 patches in my first two years as a Linux kernel contributor.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/449/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-09T14:00:00", "end": "2026-08-09T14:20:00", "duration": 20, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Science of Community", "conf_key": 342, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Revival Retrospective: Fedora KDE", "authors": [ { "name": "Neal Gompa", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "he/him/his", "twitter": "Det_Conan_Kudo", "mastodon": "@neal@social.gompa.me", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ce49c1fd10e205bb896efc9f352f7b87?s=120&d=mp", "code": "541", "biography": "Neal Gompa is a developer for\u2013and contributor to\u2013Fedora, CentOS, AlmaLinux, and openSUSE. Neal focuses primarily on the base Linux system components (such as package and software management) and desktop Linux. He believes in \u201cupstream first,\u201d which has led him all over the open source world. In addition to open source work as a consultant through Velocity Limitless, he is also a co-host on the Sudo Show podcast where he talks about \"the business of Linux.\"", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Fedora KDE has had an exciting few years with a growing community and significant efforts between Fedora and the KDE project. This presentation will briefly cover the history and contextualize it for the future developments emerging within the Fedora KDE SIG.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/457/", "cancelled": false, "twitter_id": "Det_Conan_Kudo", "mastodon_id": "@neal@social.gompa.me" }, { "room": "MCLD 2012", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2012" ], "start": "2026-08-07T14:00:00", "end": "2026-08-07T14:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Legal Issues", "conf_key": 412, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Hacking copyright and regulations for 25years! Past, present and a call for a future!", "authors": [ { "name": "Nicole Faerber", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "she/her", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/923db603f7a6ee03b65c77f71a340435?s=120&d=mp", "code": "584", "biography": "Nicole is a FOSS veteran, she started with the GNU C compiler and MicroEmacs on an Intel 80386SX laptop back in 1991, quickly moved on to Linux around 1992/1993 and submitted her first kernel patch some time in 1994. Nicole studied a mix of computer science and electrical engineering in Siegen Germany. In 1999 she co-founded a company for embedded Linux development services, she ran until 2014 when she joined Purism (USA) as CTO, where she headed the development of the Lbrem5 mobile phone. In 2024 Nicole joined Mercedes-Benz and is working in the FOSS compliance and governance team.\r\nThroughout her professional career in FOSS Nicole supported various FOSS projects and supports the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) as a volunteer.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "The Free Software Foundation Europe is celebrating its 25th anniversary!\r\n\r\nCourt cases, law, regulation, advocacy, the landscape is changing. We hacked the copyright system and today Free Software is literally everywhere. There is no internet service without Free Software, the vast majority of mobile devices runs software licensed under Free Software licenses and Free Software has become a corner stone of modern digital life on earth - We have won! But did we really? \r\n\r\nWith the advent of artificial intelligence we are confronted with a big challenge: Will Free Software licenses, an important tool to accomplish our goals in the Free Software movement, carry us through the next 25 years? What will be the meaning of \"software\" at all, when A.I.s just dump it out, without any copyright? No license to enforce the four freedoms? Do we, and how do we, have to adapt our approach to accomplish software freedom? \r\n\r\nThe FSFE has worked for 25 years for the right to use, study, share, and improve software. We worked for device neutrality, on regulation benefiting Free Software, on \"Public Money? Public Code!\", legal education, and involving the next generation of young hackers. A lot of what the FSFE did the last 25 years is an uphill battle, a small pan European NGO against Goliaths of the IT industry. Just right now the FSFE is taking part as a key expert in hearings by the European Commission against Apple! The case is argued based on the EU DMA, the Digital Markets Act, a EU law that is supposed to protect European customers from being exploited by digital monopolists. \r\n\r\nIn the work of the FSFE in the past years we learned that we need to look beyond technology and licenses if we want to protect personal freedom, self determination, and sovereignty.\r\n\r\nLet's review some challenges and great achievements from these years, why was the FSFE involved in an anti competition case about Microsoft, why are we involved in two cases about Apple right now, and why do we believe we need more of such \"non-traditional\" work for software freedom? In this talk we will examine examples from 25 years of work for software freedom and what we can learn from them for the future! We cannot continue with the old approaches, we need to hack the system again to accomplish software freedom.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/424/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-08T14:00:00", "end": "2026-08-08T14:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Camp KDE", "conf_key": 355, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "KDE from Enterprise to Mobile", "authors": [ { "name": "Troy Dawson", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/708c760f3a67304fb111d08789ac7736?s=120&d=mp", "code": "585", "biography": "Spiky Hair, Hawaiian Shirts ... with Penguins on them.\r\nTroy currently works for Red Hat as the CentOS Stream Team Lead. \r\nHe is on the CentOS Board. \r\nHe is the EPEL Steering Committee chair. \r\nHe is chair of the Centos Alternative Images SIG, and an active member of the CentOS ISA SIG.\r\nTroy is also on the Fedora KDE SIG dealing largely with KDE in EPEL.\r\nYes, he is the same Troy Dawson that co-founded Scientific Linux.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Two very different scenarios, joined by KDE.\r\nWhat do you do when your favorite Enterprise Linux distribution takes out KDE?\r\nWhat do you do when you want a touch friendly desktop for your tablet or phone?\r\nJoin Troy as he explains how he, and the Fedora KDE SIG, made KDE for Enteprise Linux better than ever, as well a Fedora Plasma Mobile an upcoming place to watch.\r\nFor Enterprise Linux he'll explain what end users want and how it is being provided.\r\nFor Plasma Mobile he'll talk about what state it is currently in, use cases, pain points (usually hardware related) and his world famous demo's.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/393/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 2012", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2012" ], "start": "2026-08-09T14:00:00", "end": "2026-08-09T14:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "FOSS in Daily Life", "conf_key": 371, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Running your own mailing list, form backend, and music library tools", "authors": [ { "name": "Pardis Noorzad", "name_pronunciation": "par-DEES noor-ZAHD", "pronouns": "she/her", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@djpardis@mstdn.business", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ad3fb593750e4154ace60e0b91b393e7?s=120&d=mp", "code": "649", "biography": "Pardis Noorzad is an engineer and researcher who builds software for data, identity, publishing, and creative tools. At [General Folders](https://generalfolders.com), she built an identity and policy aware transport layer for B2B data, replacing SFTP, email, and ad hoc pipelines. Her open source work includes [newsletter](https://github.com/djpardis/newsletter), a small HTTP API for running a mailing list on Cloudflare Workers, [form](https://github.com/djpardis/form), a Cloudflare Workers backend for embedded forms with spam filtering, storage, and notifications, and [dj](https://github.com/djpardis/dj), a local Serato companion for browser and desktop.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "This talk walks through three small open source systems built around clear\r\nownership of state, interfaces, and operational boundaries.\r\n[newsletter](https://github.com/djpardis/newsletter) runs mailing list workflows\r\non Cloudflare Workers, [form](https://github.com/djpardis/form) handles embedded\r\nform submissions with validation and abuse controls, and [dj](https://github.com/djpardis/dj)\r\nreads local Serato library data for browser and desktop use. I will cover how\r\nthe projects use APIs, storage, async work, file parsing, documentation, and setup\r\npaths to stay understandable while still solving real publishing, submission,\r\nand creative workflow problems.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/416/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@djpardis@mstdn.business" }, { "room": "MCLD 3038", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3038" ], "start": "2026-08-09T14:00:00", "end": "2026-08-09T14:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "XMPP", "conf_key": 366, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Adventures in Onboarding: Episode V - The Server Goes Down", "authors": [ { "name": "Gideon Mayhak", "name_pronunciation": "GID-ee-un MAY-hack", "pronouns": "He/Him", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e6de53a7781b92ebfd24322b0854506c?s=120&d=mp", "code": "610", "biography": "Gideon is a longtime user and supporter of free open source software. With over 20 years of experience supporting and training users across both proprietary and open systems, he has a love for working with people to figure things out. Gideon currently works on the support team for JMP.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "More tales from the front lines of supporting users of federated services!\r\n\r\nIt is a dark time for the Federation. Although a Community Server has been destroyed and rebuilt, users have migrated to servers across the network. Evading the dreaded Proprietary Software, a group of freedom fighters has established a new base on the remote hosting platform of Snikket.\r\n\r\nPowerful adversaries seek to grab and keep control over our digital lives. Walled gardens abound! What can we do to take back ownership of how we communicate with each other?...\r\n\r\nThis talk will focus on a case study of surviving an upgrade-gone-wrong of a large public server, and the efforts to help hundreds of users regain access to services and their communication freedom. We'll discuss common terms related to XMPP and the Jabber network, look at some of the pitfalls inherent in depending on the kindness of strangers, and talk about what's being done to build a brighter tomorrow.\r\n\r\nCome learn more about open federated systems and how you can help others join the fight!", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/375/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "CEME 1202", "rooms": [ "CEME 1202" ], "start": "2026-08-09T14:00:00", "end": "2026-08-09T14:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Wild Card", "conf_key": 362, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Contributing to OpenHospital: An Undergraduate Team's First Open Source Experience", "authors": [ { "name": "Abhigna Nimmagadda", "name_pronunciation": "Uh-big-nuh", "pronouns": "She/her", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/d3c92c551bbd918e9dbf5c583b4f36a6?s=120&d=mp", "code": "574", "biography": "Abhigna is a junior at the University of Washington Bothell pursuing Computer Science and Data Science. She is passionate about developing software for real-world impact, and is currently researching cybersecurity risks that generative AI poses to open source software with Dr. Kaylea Champion. Her interests span IP law, generative AI, and user-centered applications. She enjoys teaching coding and exploring the broader implications of AI on technology - from its impact on CVE databases to how it can support developers without compromising software quality and integrity.", "username": "" }, { "name": "Likitha Nanduri", "name_pronunciation": "Lee-key-tha, Nun-doo-ri", "pronouns": "She/Her", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/358500f3322d9fa5afc9c8e623d8b3a4?s=120&d=mp", "code": "591", "biography": "Likitha Nanduri is an undergraduate Computer Science & Software Engineering student at the University of Washington Bothell, with a minor in Data Science. She is part of a student team contributing to OpenHospital, a free and open-source health information management system for healthcare settings.\r\nHer OpenHospital work focuses on improving sortable and filterable tables in the desktop GUI, starting with the Exam Browser. She has also contributed to Graphitti, an open-source neural network simulator developed by the UWB Biocomputing Group, where she worked on recorder subsystem research, documentation, and understanding how simulation data is captured across different models.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "OpenHospital is a free and open-source health information management system used in hospitals across Uganda, Ethiopia, and other resource-limited regions. Built by Informatici Senza Frontiere, it manages patient records, laboratory results, pharmacy stock, and statistical reporting for healthcare workers and patients who depend on it daily.\r\n\r\nAs a team of four undergraduate students contributing to OpenHospital for the first time, we each tackled a separate \"good first issues\" in the OpenHospital ecosystem. This talk shares what components we worked on, and what we learned about navigating a large, real-world codebase.\r\n\r\nComponents We Worked On:\r\nWe each tackled a different area of the project, with contributions spanning reporting infrastructure, interface consistency, translation hygiene, and data accessibility across the GUI. \r\n\r\nReport Localization Structure\r\nOpenHospital generates clinical reports (patient records, outpatient statistics, lab summaries) using JasperReports. However, managing the translation of these reports includes a lot of manual work. The work on report localization investigates whether this process can be streamlined, which reduces the maintenance burden for contributors and makes it easier to add support for new languages in the future.\r\n\r\nSortable and Filterable Tables\r\nOpenHospital\u2019s desktop GUI uses tables to display information such as exams, patients, lab records, and inventory. However, not all of these tables have consistent sorting and filtering behavior, which can make it harder to quickly find the right record. The work on sortable and filterable tables focuses on applying standard table sorting and natural text filtering across the GUI, starting with the Exam Browser as an initial implementation pattern. This improves data accessibility for users while preserving correct row selection for actions like Edit, Delete, and Results after sorting or filtering. \r\n\r\nOrphan Bundle Cleanup\r\nOpenHospital supports multiple languages through translation bundles that map interface text to localization keys used throughout the system. Over time, some translation entries became \u201corphaned,\u201d meaning they were no longer connected to any active part of the application. This component focuses on identifying and cleaning up these unused translation keys by tracing references across Java source files, reports, and configuration files. Removing outdated entries improves maintainability, reduces confusion for future contributors, and helps keep the localization system organized as the project continues to grow and add language support. \r\n\r\nConsistent Save/OK Button Pattern\r\nIn different OpenHospital GUI dialogs, many Save/OK button implementations handled insert and update operations using different patterns even though the overall logic was very similar. Some dialogs duplicated insert/update code, some handled exceptions differently, and others used different success-checking approaches. The work on interface consistency involves implementing a common Insert/Edit pattern that standardizes the save flow, error handling, and dialog behavior while still preserving the separate UI events needed for insert vs update actions.\r\n\r\nWhat We Learned\r\nWe will share how we selected Open Hospital as a project to work on, and what it feels like to contribute to a production codebase for the first time - from environment setup to navigating Jira, reading unfamiliar code, and drafting pull requests that follow strict contribution guidelines. We hope this talk encourages other students and first-time contributors to take the leap into open source without feeling intimidated.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/378/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 2012", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2012" ], "start": "2026-08-08T14:00:00", "end": "2026-08-08T14:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Legal Issues", "conf_key": 349, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "copyleft-next BoF", "authors": [ { "name": "Bradley M. K\u00fchn", "name_pronunciation": "BRAD-ley (rhymes with \"gladly\"), emm (the letter), kewwn (make a circle with your lips as you make the u sound w/ the umlaut). If you struggle with K\u00fchn, the english word \"keen\" said in the Queen's English is pretty close.", "pronouns": "he/them", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@bkuhn@copyleft.org", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/0580d7a67da1b15b1695edc4e22779f9?s=120&d=mp", "code": "635", "biography": "[Bradley M. K\u00fchn](https://ebb.org/bkuhn) is the [Policy Fellow and\r\nHacker-in-Residence](https://sfconservancy.org/about/staff/#bkuhn) at\r\n[Software Freedom Conservancy](https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer)\r\n(\"SFC\") and Co-Editor-in-Chief of [the copyleft-next\r\nlicense](https://next.copyleft.org). K\u00fchn began his work in the software\r\nfreedom movement as a volunteer in 1992 \u2014 as an early adopter of\r\nLinux-based systems and contributor to various FOSS projects, including\r\nPerl.\r\n\r\nK\u00fchn worked during the 1990s as a system administrator and software\r\ndeveloper for various companies, and also spent one year teaching high\r\nschool Advanced Placement Computer Science. As FSF's Executive Director\r\nfrom 2001\u20132005, K\u00fchn led FSF's GPL enforcement, launched its Associate\r\nMember program, and invented the copyleft network services clause found\r\nin the Affero GPL. K\u00fchn was SFC's primary volunteer from 2006\u20132010, and\r\nbecame its first staff person in 2011. K\u00fchn's work at SFC focuses on\r\n[enforcement of copyleft and the GPL\r\nAgreements](https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/), FOSS\r\nlicensing policy, and non-profit infrastructural solutions for FOSS.\r\nK\u00fchn holds a summa cum laude B.S. in Computer Science from [Loyola\r\nUniversity in\r\nMaryland](https://www.loyola.edu/academics/computer-science), and an\r\nM.S. in Computer Science from the [University of\r\nCincinnati](http://www.cs.uc.edu/). [K\u00fchn's Master's\r\nthesis](http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/articles/thesis/) discussed methods for\r\ndynamic interoperability of FOSS programming languages. K\u00fchn received\r\nthe 2012 Open Source Award, and the 2021 Award for the Advancement of\r\nFree Software --- both in recognition for his lifelong policy work on\r\ncopyleft licensing and its enforcement.\r\n\r\nK\u00fchn writes about his work on [SFC\\'s\r\nblog](https://sfconservancy.org/blog/?author=bkuhn) and as\r\n[\\@bkuhn@copyleft.org on the Fediverse (via\r\nMastodon)](https://fedi.copyleft.org/@bkuhn){rel=\"me\"}.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Like last year, come to this open discussion session about the [copyleft-next](https://next.copyleft.org) project.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/433/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@bkuhn@copyleft.org" }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-07T14:25:00", "end": "2026-08-07T14:45:00", "duration": 20, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Open Source Governance and Community Stability", "conf_key": 418, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Recoverable grants for free software maintenance", "authors": [ { "name": "Thomas Humphreys", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "thomphreys", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/9cb930dbee880325e7c01eb969bb1e38?s=120&d=mp", "code": "599", "biography": "Thomas Humphreys is on the funding coordination team at the Ethereum Foundation, where he works on new mechanisms for sustainable digital public goods funding and expanding the top of funnel for open source infrastructure. His background spans quantitative engineering at a digital asset hedge fund, security focused work on onchain behaviour, and founding roles in identity and payments.\r\n\r\nHe co-founded Everyname, a web3 identity startup focused on interoperability across protocols, and later founded Monetic, the first onchain neo banking startup building stablecoin based payment rails for merchants and consumers. Across these roles he has worked directly with smart contract risk, identity fragmentation and payment infrastructure at scale, which now informs his work on embedded funding mechanisms and organizational models for resilient public infrastructure.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "The XZ Utils backdoor in March 2024 caught a maintainer takeover that had been in progress for two years. The attacker had positioned himself as a trusted contributor to a compression library running inside billions of SSH connections. He was caught because a Microsoft engineer noticed a half-second slowdown on a test machine. The original maintainer of the library was a single volunteer who had publicly written about burnout months earlier.\r\n\r\nXZ is the visible end of a wider pattern. Most of the open source software that the internet runs on is maintained by people who are not paid for the work, or whose paid work is supported by employers whose priorities do not include the upstream project. Existing funding models do not fix this as grants are episodic and corporate sponsorship comes with risk of capture. Each model has supported good work, none has produced sustainable funding that respects what maintainers actually want to spend their time on.\r\n\r\nThis talk introduces a financial instrument designed to address this gap: an allocator commits capital to a vehicle that streams funding to a maintainer against milestones while a small fraction of the revenue generated by transactions that use the maintained software flows back to the vehicle. Principal is recovered over time while the maintainer continues to be funded after recovery completes.\r\n\r\nMost of the talk is about the design constraints that determine whether such an instrument produces sustainable funding or produces capture. Four principles matter most: \r\n(1) requiring multiple allocators per instrument so that no single funder has decisive influence over which maintainers get prioritised. \r\n(2) separating the actors who curate the maintainer basket from the actors who operate the disbursement mechanism. \r\n(3) building mechanism diversity rather than a single canonical wrapper. \r\n(4) sunsetting curator and allocator authority on a defined schedule so that no governance position calcifies.\r\n\r\nThe session is for maintainers and contributors who have thought about funding and found existing models inadequate. The argument is that maintainers can take structured funding without giving up the autonomy that makes their work valuable, but only if the design constraints above are treated as load-bearing rather than optional. Q&A welcomes pushback on whether the constraints are sufficient.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/411/", "cancelled": false, "twitter_id": "thomphreys" }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-09T14:25:00", "end": "2026-08-09T14:45:00", "duration": 20, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Science of Community", "conf_key": 416, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Accidental Ambassadors: Open Source as Diplomatic Work", "authors": [ { "name": "Laura Langdon", "name_pronunciation": "LOR-UH LANG-DUN", "pronouns": "She/her", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@LauraLangdon@hachyderm.io", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/836babfb7950aba69f914ca2c221a9b2?s=120&d=mp", "code": "608", "biography": "Laura Langdon is the Community Manager for the Open Source Program Office (OSPO) network of the University of California. With a focus on the humans in tech communities, Laura is passionate about documentation, diversity and inclusion across all axes, and social responsibility. Working to connect people within the UC open source community to one another and to the greater world of open source, her responsibilities include planning meetups, helping to connect aspiring contributors with projects and vice versa, and creating educational materials about OSS workflows.\r\n\r\nLaura has previous experience as a developer advocate at Suborbital Software Systems (acquired by F5), and previously as a math lecturer at CSU East Bay. In her free time, Laura enjoys recreational research, knitting, and optimizing all the things.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Before specialization split scholarship into disciplines, philosophers were also scientists and mathematicians. As community manager of the UC Open Source Program Office (OSPO) Network, I'm watching open source begin to undo some of that siloing.\r\n\r\nThe campus OSPO meetups bring together sociologists, historians, computer scientists, mathematicians, IT staff, librarians, and administrators. The United Nations' Open Source Week brought together OSPOs from tech, the automotive industry, and government; physical infrastructure builders; and the UN's Digital Public Goods Alliance. People who would not otherwise be in the same conversations are finding each other because they all touch open source.\r\n\r\nThis is diplomatic work. Open source practitioners are ambassadors: between maintainers and contributors, between projects and their funders, between the open source world and the wider one increasingly dependent upon it. Once we recognize the position we occupy we can step into the ambassador role on purpose, stewarding our projects, our communities, and our practice of diplomacy so that what open source has been doing accidentally, we do deliberately.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/456/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@LauraLangdon@hachyderm.io" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-07T14:45:00", "end": "2026-08-07T15:00:00", "duration": 15, "kind": "Break", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 245, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-06T14:45:00", "end": "2026-08-06T15:00:00", "duration": 15, "kind": "Break", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 244, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-09T14:45:00", "end": "2026-08-09T15:00:00", "duration": 15, "kind": "Break", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 247, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-08T14:45:00", "end": "2026-08-08T15:00:00", "duration": 15, "kind": "Break", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 246, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "CEME 1202", "rooms": [ "CEME 1202" ], "start": "2026-08-09T15:00:00", "end": "2026-08-09T15:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 363, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-09T15:00:00", "end": "2026-08-09T15:20:00", "duration": 20, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Science of Community", "conf_key": 346, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Designing attestations UI: The Security and Safety of OSS package supply chain", "authors": [ { "name": "Eriol Fox", "name_pronunciation": "ehhrooll Fox", "pronouns": "they/them", "twitter": "https://bsky.ap", "mastodon": "@erioldoesdesign@hachyderm.io", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f2500f0f4dd3a2148c7d7d17817fabd5?s=120&d=mp", "code": "577", "biography": "Eriol has been working as a designer for 15+ years working in for-profits and then NGO\u2019s and open-source software organisations, working on complex problems like sustainable food systems, peace-building, censorship circumvention OSS, Human Rights OSS tools and crisis response technology. Eriol now works at The Open Home Foundation on OSS first smart home technology.\r\n\r\nEriol is part of the core teams at Open Source Design (http://opensourcedesign.net/) Sustain UX & Design working group (https://sustainoss.org/working-groups/design-and-ux/) and help hosts podcast about open source and design (https://sosdesign.sustainoss.org/)\r\n\r\nEriol is a non-binary, queer person who uses they/them pronouns.\r\n\r\nEriol was studying a Comp Sci PhD looking at how designers participate in humanitarian and human rights focussed open-source software projects and is looking for a new home for this research.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "After working on a 12+ week project looking at how to express in the varied UI's of three package repositories (npm, pypi and RubyGems) we can now see more clearly what developers, across skill and knowledge levels, use in package repository pages to make a decision on the security of an OSS located on a registry. These decisions are critical for better understanding trust, value, social proof and the knowledge of secure practices across developers and helps answer the question: how much do developers know about the security of their software supply chain?\r\n\r\nThis talk will cover: 1. The essential user research findings from the project, 2. How user research informed the UI style guide design build 3. What gaps and opportunities are here to continue design in the SBOM, Attestations and securing software repositories topics.\r\n\r\nhttps://github.com/ossf/wg-securing-software-repos/tree/main/docs/attestations-style-guide", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/453/", "cancelled": false, "twitter_id": "https://bsky.ap", "mastodon_id": "@erioldoesdesign@hachyderm.io" }, { "room": "CEME 1210", "rooms": [ "CEME 1210" ], "start": "2026-08-07T15:00:00", "end": "2026-08-07T15:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Linux Kernel", "conf_key": 395, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Measuring hypervisor impact on Linux scheduling", "authors": [ { "name": "Roan Richmond", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "He/Him", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/0bc2252b151e0d0b0399e18811da61dc?s=120&d=mp", "code": "558", "biography": "Roan Richmond is a Software Engineer working in Automotive for Codethink. He has worked on multiple large scale automotive projects for different client OEMs, specialising in Automotive Linux for Software-Defined-Vehicles (SDV). Focusing on both the integration of Linux into complex Automotive stacks and how we can measure trust in these large systems often comprising of vendor supplied binaries.\r\n\r\nRoan also has contributions into Open-Source projects such as the Linux kernel, QEMU, CVA6 and the Trustable Software Framework.\r\n\r\nAt work Roan is focused on how Linux can be configured to be Safe enough to run ASIL-D rated processes, which previously were typically constrained to propriety Real-Time-Operating-Systems, such as AUTOSAR.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "The Linux kernel is used in much of today\u2019s critical infrastructure, often operating autonomously, running processes without direct human supervision. In many of the industries gaining the most benefit from Linux, including Cloud, Finance and Automotive, it is common to see Linux used with a hypervisor. Using a hypervisor is commonly thought to allow for better security, reliability, and safety. However, impacts are often overlooked when hypervisors are presented as the only viable solution. As software complexity increases, decisions that have performance implications and increase the current stack's depth should not be taken lightly.\r\n\r\n## Hypervisor Coercion\r\n\r\nIn automotive, there is often no choice but to use a hypervisor; it could be mandated by hardware suppliers as a clause for using the hardware components safely. This can result in a situation where an integrator has to awkwardly stack the original system on top of an externally supplied hypervisor.\r\n\r\nTo make matters worse, the hypervisors that are forced upon automotive companies are often proprietary black-boxes, provided only as binaries to be integrated upon.\r\n\r\n## Naive Illusions\r\n \r\nWhen migrating a bare-metal Linux-based system to a hypervisor, it is a fool's game to assume that things will just work the first time and that the \u201clight-weight\u201d hypervisor will have no impact on the system. Therefore, it is important to understand the impact a given hypervisor has on performance and the limitations this impact puts on the system.\r\n\r\nWithout properly understanding the effects of the hypervisor on the system, both benefits and pitfalls, adding a hypervisor into the base of the software stack results in a less predictable system. Increased complexity, reduced performance, unexpected resource contention, reduced hardware peripheral support are all real possible outcomes of introducing a proprietary hypervisor without proper consideration.\r\n\r\n## Statistical over Blind Trust\r\n\r\nOften, hypervisors include documentation on overhead, which can range from \u201clight\u201d to actual figures like \u201cadds 10% overhead to page allocations\u201d. In general, these are provided without evidence or means to reproduce the figures made. Relying on these values is a blunder that regularly results in unforeseen issues when moving into production.\r\n\r\nMeasuring performance metrics on representative workloads is one method of building confidence and deriving overheads. These metrics can then be used to inform architectural decisions about the Linux system running on top of the hypervisor, such as avoiding specific physical CPUs which the hypervisor regularly pre-empts.\r\n\r\n## The Talk\r\n\r\nThis presentation presents an investigation into the effects of a black-box hypervisor on deadline scheduling in the Linux kernel. Using the millions of gathered data points, trends can be identified, driving further analysis and resulting in actionable architectural decisions backed by data. Specifically, this talk will show how scheduling data analysis resulted in hypotheses about the hypervisor core weighting, and how this was then transferred into limitations being placed on integrated applications.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/447/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-08T15:00:00", "end": "2026-08-08T15:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Camp KDE", "conf_key": 356, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Kdenlive - The Past, Present, and Future", "authors": [ { "name": "Bernd Jordan", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "berndmj", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e89beabfea507e12ac1de8daab495afd?s=120&d=mp", "code": "590", "biography": "Bernd is a member of the Kdenlive core team focusing on the online manual, effects user interface, and community support.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Kdenlive (short for KDE Non-linear Video Editor) is a community project which aims to deliver a free and open source video editing software application to allow everybody to produce high quality content in order to increase the democratization of the media. This presentation will look into Kdenlive's origins, what it is offering today, which enhancements and new features are planned for the future, and how we are engaging with the community to make Kdenlive better.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/392/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "berndmj" }, { "room": "MCLD 3038", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3038" ], "start": "2026-08-06T15:00:00", "end": "2026-08-06T15:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Databases", "conf_key": 248, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "O11y in One: Exploring ClickHouse as a Unified Telemetry Database", "authors": [ { "name": "Josh Lee", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/afbbd1ad7dbbfa718a0d9bd5e11b0e5d?s=120&d=mp", "code": "600", "biography": "Josh is a seasoned software developer with over a decade of experience, specializing in a broad range of topics including operations, observability, agile methodologies, and accessibility. His passion for technology is matched by his enthusiasm for sharing knowledge through public speaking. Currently, Josh serves as a Developer Advocate for Altinity, where he creates educational content on ClickHouse and OpenTelemetry, and he is a contributor to the OpenTelemetry project.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "OpenTelemetry is often introduced as a way to send your metrics, traces, and logs to separate backend databases. But in reality, most organizations juggle at least half a dozen monitoring tools in production. What we really need isn\u2019t just a standardized way to collect telemetry\u2014it\u2019s a unified datastore that brings all the backends together, much like how OpenTelemetry has a unified telemetry collection.\r\nCould ClickHouse be that solution? In this talk, Joshua will dive into the fundamental nature of telemetry and explore what we truly need from a unified telemetry datastore. He\u2019ll break down the specific features of ClickHouse that make it an exceptional choice for tracing and logs today\u2014and hint at its growing potential for time-series data in the future.\r\nFrom there, he\u2019ll highlight the seamless integrations between ClickHouse and open-source tools like OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, and Kafka, showcasing how these technologies work together to enhance observability pipelines. Finally, we\u2019ll take a closer look at cutting-edge, open-source observability platforms built on ClickHouse, including CoRoot, QRYN, and SigNoz.\r\nWhether you\u2019re building a complete observability platform or exploring how to simplify your own observability strategy, this session will equip you with insights into leveraging ClickHouse as a core part of your telemetry infrastructure. Join us to learn how to move beyond fragmented tools and unlock the power of unified observability.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/403/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-06T15:00:00", "end": "2026-08-06T15:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Open Source Governance and Community Stability", "conf_key": 282, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Open Source Survival in the age of AI", "authors": [ { "name": "Joshua D. Drake (JD)", "name_pronunciation": "JD", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/bdce653f27a4cc3cb6ea7a6b1db8ffe4?s=120&d=mp", "code": "565", "biography": "Joshua (JD) is a long time Open Source advocate and entrepreneur dating back to the early days of Professional Open Source. From the valleys of Usenet he sold custom Linux servers with a whopping 16 MB of ram and 1GB SCSI drives. These were the days of SLS and many, many floppy disks. Through the years he has help found multiple Internet Service Providers as well as eventually launching his own firm, Command Prompt, Inc.. Command Prompt has over the years become one of the predominant privately owned PostgreSQL support and Consulting firms.\r\n\r\nAn avid public speaker and writer, he is also the founder of United States PostgreSQL, PgConf (PostgresConf) and More than a Refresh: A podcast about the most interesting people you haven't met. He currently resides off-grid in Montana.\r\n\r\nHe divides his time between Command Prompt, off-grid projects, mentoring/leadership roles and helping those who wish to become successful, define what that means for them.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Open Source software has thrived on a simple, revolutionary premise: code is a valuable, scarce resource that is best built, maintained, and shared collaboratively. However, the rise of AI is challenging this foundation. When AI can clone, rewrite, or reverse-engineer complex codebases in a matter of days\u2014often bypassing traditional licensing and attribution\u2014the rules of open source are being rewritten. \r\n\r\nThis presentation explores the crisis facing open source communities and maintainers in the AI era. As AI agents increasingly consume OSS to train models and generate code, the traditional incentives for open source contribution are shifting. We will examine the core threats to the ecosystem\u2014ranging from \"shadow AI\" to the erosion of traditional software licenses\u2014while offering a pragmatic blueprint for how open source can adapt and survive.\r\n\r\n# Key themes to be covered include:\r\n\r\n* The Death of Traditional Licensing? \r\n\r\n* The Contribution Crisis: Managing the influx of AI-generated pull requests and low-quality code \"slop\" without burning out human maintainers.\r\n\r\n* Redefining Value: Shifting the focus of open source from the raw code itself to the unique value of human-curated communities, domain expertise, and rigorous security validation.\r\n\r\n* The Rise of Open Source AI: How open models and tools are counterbalancing proprietary AI monopolies, and how developers can leverage them strategically.\r\n\r\nAttendees will leave this session with a clear understanding of the evolving legal, ethical, and technical landscape of open source. By adopting new strategies for governance, community building, and licensing, open source can ensure that the movement remains the bedrock of software innovation in an AI-dominated world.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/409/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "CEME 1212", "rooms": [ "CEME 1212" ], "start": "2026-08-06T15:00:00", "end": "2026-08-06T15:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Toolchain and Other Developer Tools", "conf_key": 316, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "KCFI Comes to GCC: Code-Reuse Defenses for the Linux Kernel", "authors": [ { "name": "Kees Cook", "name_pronunciation": "\"case\"; IPA: /kes/", "pronouns": "he/him", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@kees@hachyderm.io", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/b3f6ae8ea3c979953a2eb3ab81469e59?s=120&d=mp", "code": "621", "biography": "Kees Cook has been working with Free Software since 1994, has been a Debian Developer since 2007, and has been a member of the Linux Kernel Technical Advisory Board since 2019. He is currently employed as a Linux kernel security engineer by Google, focusing on upstream kernel security defenses.\r\n\r\nFrom 2006 through 2011 he worked for Canonical as the Ubuntu Security Team's Tech Lead. Before that, he worked as the lead sysadmin at OSDL, before it was the Linux Foundation. He has written various utilities including GOPchop and Sendpage, and contributes randomly to other projects including fun chunks of code in OpenSSH, Inkscape, Wine, MPlayer, and Wireshark.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Kernel Control Flow Integrity (KCFI) hardens the Linux kernel against function pointer hijacking by validating each indirect call against its expected function-type signature. This protection has, until recently, only existed in Clang. This talk is the story of bringing it to GCC: giving myself a crash course in GCC's internals, experimenting with implementation choices across front, middle, and backend code, adding coverage and regression tests as I hit bugs, and working through reviewer feedback across a dozen revisions. Attendees will leave with a picture of what it takes to work on a security feature in GCC, how KCFI actually works, and where the implementation stands today.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/390/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@kees@hachyderm.io" }, { "room": "MCLD 3014", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3014" ], "start": "2026-08-06T15:00:00", "end": "2026-08-06T15:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Right to Repair", "conf_key": 320, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Chromebooks are the new Thinkpads; turning ewaste into a daily driver", "authors": [ { "name": "Owen Zimmerman", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "He/him", "twitter": "owen_zimmerman", "mastodon": "@owen@fedi.fyralabs.com", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/acfd70f7e4ab05b91aeddfab7421c4ff?s=120&d=mp", "code": "611", "biography": "Owen Zimmerman has been an active open source contributor for many years. He focuses on Fyra Labs projects and their ecosystem partners, helping to lead Ultramarine Linux and the Terra Repository, and the relationships and direction of Fyra Labs. He also is a org member of the Open Gaming Collective on behalf of Fyra Labs, and a co-founder of Fyra Stack.\r\n\r\nYou can reach him at owen@fyralabs.com", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "You will learn how to replace ChromeOS with any Linux distribution of your choosing, the different options for keeping or upgrading the firmware, and then a demo of the SuzyQ Board functionality and use cases.\r\nOn top of the technical side, I will discuss how I have personally reduced Chromebook e-waste at various orgs with these tools; helping kickstart you and your communities in implementing the same strategies.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/379/", "cancelled": false, "twitter_id": "owen_zimmerman", "mastodon_id": "@owen@fedi.fyralabs.com" }, { "room": "CEME 1212", "rooms": [ "CEME 1212" ], "start": "2026-08-07T15:00:00", "end": "2026-08-07T15:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Toolchain and Other Developer Tools", "conf_key": 393, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "The How and Why of Bootstrappable Builds", "authors": [ { "name": "Timothy Sample", "name_pronunciation": "tim-oh-thee sam-pull", "pronouns": "he/him", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/253af199614de17a8b1c948c601346fc?s=120&d=mp", "code": "593", "biography": "Tim is a contributor to the GNU Guix project, where he helps clarify the composition of software artifacts. He has worked on the long-term archival of Guix package inputs (i.e., source code), and is currently focused on \u201cbootstrappable\u201d builds for core packages such as GCC and Guile. To this end he has worked on GNU Mes (a Scheme interpreter), built a shell, and written several core Unix utilities in Scheme (sed, awk, etc.). He has also written a Scheme interpreter in assembly that is capable enough to compile C code and run key Guix build scripts.\r\n\r\nAs a long-time member of the software freedom community (cutting his teeth on Debian \u201csarge\u201d), Tim is fluent in it as both a body of work and a political strategy. While offline, he enjoys spending time with his family, baking bread, and playing traditional fiddle music.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "We expect to have the freedom to study how a program works. To that end, we expect that a program\u2019s source code be available. However, that source code only becomes a \u201cprogram\u201d with the help of another program (a compiler or interpreter). Many of the details of how a program works live in this second program; perhaps our study warrants a look at its source code, too. Now we have fallen into a loop: we can keep wondering about the source code to the program that made the program that made the program\u2026. For most modern software, the exact chain of programs making programs is lost to history. Consider a modern copy of GCC distributed by Debian \u2013 is it possible to obtain the source code to every C compiler used to compile it and all its ancestors? Many of them will be earlier versions of GCC distributed by earlier versions of Debian, but eventually we will reach a time before Debian and even a time before GCC. Which compilers were used then, and is the source code available?\r\n\r\nKen Thompson warned about the security implications of this in his Turing Award lecture \u201cReflections on Trusting Trust\u201d. In that lecture he explains how a backdoor can persist in a self-hosting compiler despite there being no indication of it in the source code. The correspondence between the source code and the program is not complete, and the details of how a program works can be obscured. To avoid this, we need to make sure that we can create the programs that make programs without relying on the entire history of compilers back to the dawn of computing! This is the aim of the Bootstrappable Builds project.\r\n\r\nGNU Guix is a package manager that provides thousands of packages for GNU/Linux systems. Over the past 10 years, the Guix community has been working to make these packages bootstrappable. For instance, the chain of C compilers working back from modern GCC is known precisely: GCC 4, GCC 2, TCC, MesCC, and M2-Planet. That last one is written in assembly which is assembled by a chain of assemblers until we hit a small (around 256 bytes) program that can be understood even without its source code. There is no need to hope we keep finding archival tapes of old versions of Unix: the entire chain is right there!\r\n\r\nAs part of my ongoing work with Guix, I\u2019ve built Germ: an implementation of the Scheme programming language in assembly. Scheme is among the best languages for building powerful abstractions on top of a small set of primitives, and Germ uses this property to be the seed from which capable build tools can grow. In this talk I will contextualize Germ within the history and future of bootstrappable builds in Guix. We will look at how it can be used to further shorten the chain of programs building programs and thereby remove needless obscurity from our quest to understand how a program works.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/383/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 2018", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2018" ], "start": "2026-08-07T15:00:00", "end": "2026-08-07T15:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Fedicon", "conf_key": 391, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "ActivityPub API - Microblogging and Beyond", "authors": [ { "name": "Django Doucet", "name_pronunciation": "d\u0292\u00e6\u014b.\u0261o\u028a", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "django@social.coop", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/68617f7d5ef12f2c4106af5b34753532?s=120&d=mp", "code": "636", "biography": "Django is a Social Web Developer and Instructor of Digital Design at NAIT (Northern Alberta Institute of Technology). He has contributed to various ActivityPub projects over the years, notably WordPress-ActivityPub, and is currently developing a Progressive Web App to push forward the unrealized potential of the ActivityPub Client API.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "My talk will explore the challenges of building a general-purpose client using ActivityPub's Client API.\r\n\r\nBy developing a general-purpose client app, participating in the specification work, and addressing its shortcomings, I will demonstrate what can be achieved, proposed, and empower platform developers to innovate new federated services.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/460/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "django@social.coop" }, { "room": "MCLD 2012", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2012" ], "start": "2026-08-07T15:00:00", "end": "2026-08-07T15:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 413, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-07T15:00:00", "end": "2026-08-07T15:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Open Source Governance and Community Stability", "conf_key": 288, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Enterprises Play Dirty", "authors": [ { "name": "Peter Farkas", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5354e68e552fa57b0c72b243be4e8b52?s=120&d=mp", "code": "616", "biography": "Peter Farkas is a seasoned open source leader with over 15 years of experience building sustainable open source projects and businesses. He currently serves as the CEO of Percona, a global leader in open source database software and services.\r\n\r\nBefore joining Percona, Peter was the Co-Founder and CEO of FerretDB, the truly open source MongoDB alternative that enables developers to use MongoDB drivers seamlessly with PostgreSQL as the backend.\r\n\r\nPeter is a strong advocate for open source solutions, believing that they can drive innovation and sustainable growth on par with-or beyond-proprietary software.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "From Red Hat to MongoDB, major vendors are increasingly adopting tactics designed to protect market power, limit competition, and restrict user freedom. This talk examines the strategies behind these moves and explores how they affect the broader open source ecosystem and the communities that rely on it.\r\nWe will discuss recent examples, the motivations driving these decisions, and the long-term risks posed to innovation, collaboration, and software freedom. Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of the dynamics at play - and what the open source community can do to remain resilient.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/412/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "CEME 1202", "rooms": [ "CEME 1202" ], "start": "2026-08-08T15:00:00", "end": "2026-08-08T15:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Fedicon", "conf_key": 311, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Blogging on the social web", "authors": [ { "name": "Matt Baer", "name_pronunciation": "Baer = \"bear\", like the animal", "pronouns": "he/him", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@matt@writing.exchange", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/76c7b124b88fd026d7540cc8b43e2417?s=120&d=mp", "code": "659", "biography": "Matt is a software developer who's spent over a decade building for the social web, from closed apps to, over the last several years, the fediverse. He's the founder of Write.as, a minimalist, writer-friendly blogging platform launched in 2015. In 2018, Write.as joined the fediverse and went open source as [WriteFreely](https://writefreely.org), which now powers hundreds of independent writing communities and blogs around the world. He is also the admin of [Writing Exchange](https://writing.exchange), a Mastodon-based community for writers, as well as other online communities.\r\n\r\nIn his free time, he helps organize [NYC Photo Stroll](https://photostroll.nyc), an in-person meetup for photographers around New York City, where he is based.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Long-form publishing via ActivityPub has come a long way in the eight years since WriteFreely joined the fediverse. In this talk, I'll give a broad overview of what that looks like today in the wider ecosystem, and dig into how you can create a publication on the social web. I'll also show how other platforms on the network can be used to share your work and engage with a wider audience on the network. Lastly,\r\nI'll give a sneak peek at an experiment we've been hacking on at Write.as to show all that can be possible with long-form content on the open social web.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/475/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@matt@writing.exchange" }, { "room": "MCLD 3002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3002" ], "start": "2026-08-09T15:00:00", "end": "2026-08-09T15:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 377, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "MCLD 3038", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3038" ], "start": "2026-08-08T15:00:00", "end": "2026-08-08T15:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "XMPP", "conf_key": 334, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Beyond Chat: Delivering mini \"apps\" with great UI", "authors": [ { "name": "Stephen Paul Weber", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "singpolyma", "mastodon": "@singpolyma.net@bsky.brid.gy", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/3ab4d3a66e470ce10eb7ec812fab3c46?s=120&d=mp", "code": "543", "biography": "Stephen is a long-time software freedom enthusiast, semi-retired from industry to focus on promoting freedomware solutions to problems faced by everyday people. Stephen currently helps run the Soprani.ca project and the related JMP.chat freedomware-based telephony provider.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "XMPP is well-known as a protocol powering chat, but it can do much more than that. There are several ways to deliver interactive experiences other than simple \"chat bots\". Resulting in mini \"apps\" that get native UI, built-in user authentication, and built-in ways to communicate this can greatly simplify building some kinds of useful software, even stuff that you wouldn't normally think of as \"chat adjacent\" at all.\r\n\r\nWe will look at some things that have already been built, and how you can go about building your own stuff too.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/369/", "cancelled": false, "twitter_id": "singpolyma", "mastodon_id": "@singpolyma.net@bsky.brid.gy" }, { "room": "MCLD 2012", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2012" ], "start": "2026-08-09T15:00:00", "end": "2026-08-09T15:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "FOSS in Daily Life", "conf_key": 372, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "From Corporate to Co-op: Contributing to Chromium at Igalia vs Google", "authors": [ { "name": "Sharon Yang", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "she/her", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fd40e6f158b63c23a4d041293222f22b?s=120&d=mp", "code": "652", "biography": "Sharon is a software engineer at Igalia, where she's part of the Chromium team. Before that, she worked on various Chromium teams at Google. She is based in the Vancouver area and happens to be a UBC alum. Outside of computers, she enjoys sewing, baking and ultimate frisbee.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Igalia is a small, cooperative consulting firm specializing in open source. Google is one of the world's largest publicly traded corporations. Both have teams working on Chromium, a massive open source\r\nproject. As a new Igalian and former Googler, Sharon gives an insider's take on contributing to Chromium at both organizations.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/472/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 3002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3002" ], "start": "2026-08-08T15:00:00", "end": "2026-08-08T15:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "AI", "conf_key": 340, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Open AI, Human Trust: How Free Software Shapes the Way People Experience Modern AI", "authors": [ { "name": "Samira", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/efdc7fc3464f1505bc625021c83aa59d?s=120&d=mp", "code": "646", "biography": "Samira Zad is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Florida International University (FIU), where she teaches a range of courses in computer science, including programming, machine learning, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence. She has a PhD in Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning and has been teaching at the university level for several years, with a strong focus on applied computing and student-centered instruction.\r\n\r\nIn addition to her teaching responsibilities, she mentors students through academic and research initiatives. Her mentorship work emphasizes research development, technical skill-building, and professional growth for undergraduate and graduate scholars.\r\n\r\nHer academic interests lie in machine learning, NLP, and AI-driven systems, with an emphasis on real-world applications of data-driven methods. She is also engaged in interdisciplinary education efforts and supports student projects that connect artificial intelligence with social and practical impact.", "username": "" }, { "name": "Kianoosh Boroojeni", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f3b809f80d121c2a807f6fc224f8fa46?s=120&d=mp", "code": "647", "biography": "Kianoosh Boroojeni, Ph.D., is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University. His work focuses on generative AI in computer science education, natural language processing, machine learning, computer networks, and cybersecurity. He has authored more than 50 scientific publications and has received over 1,150 Google Scholar citations.\r\n\r\nAt FIU, Dr. Boroojeni has led curriculum modernization efforts that meaningfully integrate generative AI into undergraduate computer science education. He chaired the CS Subcommittee of the Undergraduate Program Committee and helped design new course pathways that prepare students for modern software development, AI-assisted workflows, and responsible computing. He has also collaborated with Google through initiatives such as Google Tech Exchange, where he piloted a software engineering course with embedded generative AI workflows.\r\n\r\nHis recent work includes research on human-AI interaction in programming education, LLM-based summarization, LLM quantization, and question-answering systems. At FOSSY 2026, he will discuss how free and open-source software powers the modern AI ecosystem.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now part of everyday life, from recommendation systems and chatbots to healthcare tools and search engines. However, many people Artificial Intelligence is increasingly shaping how people search for information, write, learn, work, make decisions, and interact with digital systems. Yet for many end users, AI can still feel like a mysterious black box. This talk explains how Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) helps make modern AI more understandable, trustworthy, and usable from a human-centered perspective.\r\nRather than focusing on advanced technical details, this session looks at AI through the lens of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI): How do people experience AI systems? What makes an AI tool feel transparent, reliable, fair, or confusing? Why does openness matter when users are asked to trust systems that influence everyday decisions?\r\n\r\nWe will introduce how open-source tools, frameworks, models, datasets, and communities support the AI technologies people encounter every day, including chatbots, recommendation systems, search tools, writing assistants, and educational applications. We will also discuss how FOSS can improve transparency, accessibility, accountability, and user agency by allowing communities to inspect, adapt, evaluate, and improve AI systems.\r\n\r\nAttendees will leave with a clearer understanding of how open-source software powers modern AI and why human-centered design, trust, and openness are essential for building AI systems that serve people well.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/436/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 3038", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3038" ], "start": "2026-08-09T15:00:00", "end": "2026-08-09T15:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "XMPP", "conf_key": 367, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Snikket: Behind the scenes of our on-demand XMPP server hosting", "authors": [ { "name": "Matthew Wild", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "he/him", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@mattj@floss.social", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/48204a5c8a92e90d7c0a436ee3f21612?s=120&d=mp", "code": "579", "biography": "Matthew Wild is an open-source developer and proponent of decentralized communication platforms. Founder of the Prosody, Snikket and Modern XMPP projects. Executive Director of the XMPP Standards Foundation.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Snikket is a project with a vision: every family and social group should have their own private communication space. We encourage self-hosting Snikket, but what about people who lack the skills or time to self-host?\r\n\r\nWe launched Snikket Hosting a few years ago, allowing anyone to sign up and launch their own Snikket instance with just a couple of clicks and no technical expertise. Each Snikket instance has an XMPP server (Prosody) at its heart. Previous XMPP hosting initiatives focused on scaling up a single XMPP server instance to support many customer domains, while our platform launches a self-contained Snikket instance for each customer using open-source software only.\r\n\r\nThis will be a mildly technical talk, which discusses our approach to hosting XMPP at scale, challenges faced, as well as the technologies and architecture decisions we chose, and a look at our roadmap for the future.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/373/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@mattj@floss.social" }, { "room": "MCLD 2012", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2012" ], "start": "2026-08-08T15:00:00", "end": "2026-08-08T15:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 350, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "MCLD 2018", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2018" ], "start": "2026-08-06T15:00:00", "end": "2026-08-06T15:45:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "FOSS and Research Computing", "conf_key": 278, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "A GNU poke-based, machine-readable file-format specification for HDF5", "authors": [ { "name": "Gerd Heber", "name_pronunciation": "/\u0261\u025b\u0281t \u02c8he\u02d0b\u0250/", "pronouns": "He/him", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/89c676a40021588785ec4651b8a3ccb2?s=120&d=mp", "code": "561", "biography": "Gerd Heber is the Executive Director of The HDF Group in Champaign, IL. The HDF Group is a non-profit organization with the mission of advancing state-of-the-art open-source data management technologies, ensuring long-term access to the data, and supporting a dedicated and diverse user community. The HDF Group is the developer of HDF5, a high-performance software library, data format, and highly scalable data service adopted across multiple industries and widely used in the scientific and research communities.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "HDF5 is a foundational file format for scientific and engineering data, but much of its practical meaning lives at the boundary between prose specifications, library implementations, and real binary files on disk. This talk presents SHAPE5 (Specification for HDF5 Analysis, Parsing, and Encoding), an effort to describe HDF5's on-disk structures as executable, machine-readable GNU poke pickles.\r\n\r\nGNU poke is a programmable editor for binary data that maps raw bytes directly into type structures. SHAPE5 applies this model to HDF5 metadata: superblocks, object headers, object header messages, B-trees, chunk indexes, checksums, and related primitives. The result is not another HDF5 decoder or encoder, but a complementary specification artifact\u2014one that can be loaded, inspected, tested, and extended interactively.\r\n\r\nThe talk will demonstrate how these pickles expose HDF5 internals from the poke REPL, how offsets and versioned structures are handled, and how tools built on top of SHAPE5\u2014`h5explain`, `h5check`, and `h5patch`\u2014support debugging, validation, data recovery, and format exploration. We will also discuss what becomes clearer when a binary format specification is executable: mistakes in the documentation, ambiguities in prose, undocumented implementation behavior, and opportunities for conformance testing.\r\n\r\nA machine-readable specification is essential for maintaining coherence across the half-dozen independent HDF5 implementations in active use. It also lowers the barrier to writing new implementations and enables more targeted fuzzing tools to harden existing ones.\r\n\r\nAttendees will leave with a practical understanding of how GNU poke can model complex binary formats, why machine-readable specifications matter for long-lived scientific data, and how free software communities can collaborate around format transparency, tooling, and preservation.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/421/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-09T15:25:00", "end": "2026-08-09T15:45:00", "duration": 20, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Science of Community", "conf_key": 417, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Lowering Barriers in Open Source: AI-Supported Onboarding with CommUnityBuddy", "authors": [ { "name": "Pedro Oliveira", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/b1869c0fec362518ac7ce60901bad71e?s=120&d=mp", "code": "564", "biography": "Ph.D. student in Informatics with a focus on open-source software ecosystems, governance, and AI-supported collaboration. My research examines how communities structure decision-making, define roles, and sustain participation over time. I investigate governance models, contributor behavior, and project health through a combination of socio-technical theory, large-scale GitHub data analysis, and explainable machine learning. I develop predictive models to better understand developer turnover, contributor trajectories, and long-term sustainability in open-source projects. My broader goal is to bridge research and practice by designing tools, models, and frameworks that improve how software communities grow, collaborate, and sustain themselves over time.", "username": "" }, { "name": "Igor Steinmacher", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "He/Him", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/48cefa12c6015806caa42903edd8ba05?s=120&d=mp", "code": "556", "biography": "I am the Associate Director for Graduate Programs in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems at Northern Arizona University. I earned my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of S\u00e3o Paulo in 2015 and was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Irvine (2013-2014).\r\n\r\nMy research bridges Software Engineering and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, with a focus on human aspects of software development. I study how to better support newcomers in Open Source Software communities and how emerging technologies\u2014especially foundational models\u2014are reshaping education and software development. More broadly, my work spans empirical software engineering, OSS sustainability, and mining software repositories.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Open source communities depend on new contributors, but onboarding remains one of the biggest barriers to participation. Newcomers often struggle to find where to start, understand project codebases, navigate documentation, and interact with the community. These challenges frequently lead to frustration and early drop-off. This talk presents CommUnityBuddy, an AI-powered assistant to support newcomer onboarding in open source scientific software projects. The system uses large language models with project specific data, such as documentation, issues, pull requests, and chat logs, to provide contextual real-time guidance.\r\n\r\nThe goal is not to replace human mentorship, but to scale it. By answering repetitive questions, and guiding contributors through common workflows, the assistant helps reduce maintainer workload while giving newcomers faster and more accessible support. The talk will cover key onboarding challenges, how AI can be used to support newcomers, the design of a retrieval-augmented system, and early evaluation insights from studies. \r\n\r\nThis work shows how *AI can improve newcomers onboarding* without disrupting community practices, offering a path toward more inclusive and sustainable open source participation.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/452/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-07T15:45:00", "end": "2026-08-07T16:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Coffee/tea break", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 385, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Coffee, tea, and snack break" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-09T15:45:00", "end": "2026-08-09T16:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Coffee/tea break", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 238, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Coffee, tea, and snack break" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-08T15:45:00", "end": "2026-08-08T16:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Coffee/tea break", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 237, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Coffee, tea, and snack break" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-06T15:45:00", "end": "2026-08-06T16:30:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Coffee/tea break", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 235, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Coffee, tea, and snack break" }, { "room": "MCLD 3014", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3014" ], "start": "2026-08-06T16:30:00", "end": "2026-08-06T17:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Right to Repair", "conf_key": 321, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "A year into Box Theory: what we've learned", "authors": [ { "name": "Denver Gingerich", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5ca795f06b3505f43bf7ba26fef37c7d?s=120&d=mp", "code": "634", "biography": "Denver is a software right-to-repair activist who is currently Director of Compliance at Software Freedom Conservancy, where he enforces software right-to-repair licenses such as the GPL, and is also a director of the worker co-operative that runs JMP.chat, a FOSS phone number (texting/calling) service. Denver writes free software in his spare time: his patches have been accepted into Wine, Linux, and wdiff. He gives presentations about digital civil rights and how to ensure FOSS remains sustainable as a community and financially, having spoken at conferences such as FOSSY, SCALE, the Canadian Repair Convention, WineConf, FOSDEM, Linux Plumbers Conference, SFSCON, CopyleftConf, Radical Networks, DebConf, Git Merge, CopyCamp Toronto, FOSSLC's Summercamp, and the Open Video Conference.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Box Theory was first introduced one year ago, at this very conference. Since then, it has toured around other conferences, with some helpful insights and feedback. Learn about where Box Theory is at now, and what's next for this helpful software (and hardware!) right-to-repair framework.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/446/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 2012", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2012" ], "start": "2026-08-09T16:30:00", "end": "2026-08-09T17:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "FOSS in Daily Life", "conf_key": 373, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "An Open Source Stack - Running a company using FOSS", "authors": [ { "name": "Danielle Mayabb", "name_pronunciation": "last name: 'may' (like the month) + 'abb' pronounced like it is in 'abbey'", "pronouns": "she/they", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/7464a4ac8df89e3484065e6e2ee68e1a?s=120&d=mp", "code": "653", "biography": "Danielle is a software developer who loves to build, fix, learn, and help people. She's worked with a number of languages/frameworks and considers herself a generalist. She currently works as a software engineer in Igalia as part of the internal tools team where she develops, integrates, and supports internal tools. Prior to Igalia, she spent 15 years with the Nevada Legislature as a Senior Developer and Research Librarian.\r\n\r\nShe holds master's degrees in Information Science and Creative Writing, a graduate certificate in Gender, Race, and Identity, and a bachelor's degree in English Literature. She also has an incurable case of imposter syndrome. She lives - with her wife, cats, and rabbits - on the traditional homelands of the Numu (Northern Paiute), Wa\u0161iw (Washoe), Newe (Western Shoshone), and Nuwu (Southern Paiute) peoples.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Igalia is an open-source consulting firm specializing in areas such as web standards, web engines and accessibility. In this talk, Danielle Mayabb, from Igalia's tools team, will talk about how Igalia uses FOSS to power the company. She will cover the technologies Igalia uses, how using an open stack compares to a corporate stack, and the pros and cons of each.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/471/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 3002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3002" ], "start": "2026-08-09T16:30:00", "end": "2026-08-09T17:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 378, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "CEME 1202", "rooms": [ "CEME 1202" ], "start": "2026-08-08T16:30:00", "end": "2026-08-08T17:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Fedicon", "conf_key": 313, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "If You Meet the Fediverse on the Road...", "authors": [ { "name": "Ben Pate", "name_pronunciation": "Ben Pate", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@benpate@mastodon.social", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fcb561cb76e143f806ce8cac5c7ecf05?s=120&d=mp", "code": "648", "biography": "I am a builder, who believes in the original promise of the Internet - that free and open communication could democratize access to knowledge and power around the world. So my contribution to this fight is in building the tools to reclaim individual freedom and sovereignty from invasive tech. By making it easier for regular, non-technical people to join the open social web, we help move humanity forward - one human at a time.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Getting started on the Fediverse is harder than you think. Let's take a \"people first\" view at our network from the outside in, and see how we can be a more welcoming community.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/474/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@benpate@mastodon.social" }, { "room": "MCLD 3038", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3038" ], "start": "2026-08-08T16:30:00", "end": "2026-08-08T17:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "XMPP", "conf_key": 335, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "\"Beautiful XMPP Testing\" revisited -- How to Overcome the Mind-Body Duality by Staring at XML", "authors": [ { "name": "Phillip Davis", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "He/Him", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/071ad9260d5ebab54971f16640e31972?s=120&d=mp", "code": "552", "biography": "Phillip is a worker-owner at MBOA, where he is part of the development team building free communication software like JMP and Cheogram. He tries to turn his quote-unquote \"rabbit-holes\" into contributions to other projects in the open-source community. Current fun-fact: the syntax of the Sumerian noun-phrase is not entirely unlike lisp's.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Mental models become more valuable the harder they are to acquire. This is especially true in relatively low-level work with protocols like XMPP, where the convenience of abstracting over the wire format is too efficient pass up. But as developers, we should also have delightful tools for exploring the raw XML that actually underlies all of this, and these tools should be useful in our daily work. Join me on my misguided quest through automated testing generators, context-free grammars, and somehow embedding the .NET runtime in Ruby. Maybe at the end, we'll have the tool we all deserve, but no promises.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/371/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "CEME 1210", "rooms": [ "CEME 1210" ], "start": "2026-08-07T16:30:00", "end": "2026-08-07T17:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Linux Kernel", "conf_key": 312, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "eBPF Beyond Networking: Creative Uses of eBPF to Extend the Kernel Functionality", "authors": [ { "name": "Rafael Roquetto", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ed14089a2b0cffc5b5c1aefc92be29c1?s=120&d=mp", "code": "624", "biography": "Rafael is a software engineer who has been building systems software in C++ and contributing to open source projects since 2005. He is a maintainer of OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation (OBI), where he works on eBPF-based application observability and auto-instrumentation. Prior to OBI, he contributed to Grafana Beyla before its donation to the OpenTelemetry project.\r\n\r\nEarlier in his career, Rafael worked extensively with the Qt project, serving as the maintainer of Qt's QNX integration plugin and contributing to QtCore, QtMultimedia, Qt Creator, and qmake. While at Blackmagic Design, he architected a declarative UI framework for the company's embedded real-time operating systems, laying the foundation for interfaces used across products including digital cinema cameras and ATEM switchers.\r\n\r\nHis work has often sat at the boundary between applications and operating systems, spanning embedded user interfaces, developer tools, kernel-level instrumentation, and observability systems that help explain what software is really doing.", "username": "" }, { "name": "Nikola Grcevski", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@vivaboredom", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ffb963c40ca976da711c063bf1943691?s=120&d=mp", "code": "623", "biography": "Nikola Grcevski has worked as a software engineer for more than 20 years, mostly in the field of compilers, managed runtimes and performance optimization. Most recently he's working on low level application instrumentation with eBPF at Grafana Labs. He's currently a maintainer of two OpenTelemetry projects: OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation and OpenTelemetry Injector.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "eBPF is often associated with networking, security, and performance analysis. Those are still some of its most visible uses, but modern eBPF gives us enough hooks to build tools that understand application behavior across several layers of the system.\r\nThis talk uses OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation (OBI) as a case study, but the focus is eBPF rather than OpenTelemetry. We will look at how OBI combines different eBPF program types to connect things that normally live in separate worlds: processes, sockets, syscalls, protocol payloads, request metadata, and distributed trace context.\r\nThe talk will cover how eBPF can be used to discover application traffic, track socket lifecycles, detect protocols, associate network activity with processes, augment application standard output and correlate requests across services. We will also look at one of the stranger tricks in OBI: propagating context by intercepting traffic and injecting trace information without modifying application code.\r\nThe goal is to show how eBPF can be used as a practical instrumentation toolkit, where the interesting part is not one hook or one program type, but how several of them can be combined to make sense of real applications.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/396/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 2018", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2018" ], "start": "2026-08-07T16:30:00", "end": "2026-08-07T17:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Fedicon", "conf_key": 301, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Welley: Expanding the Fediverse with Groups, Channels, and a New DID Approach", "authors": [ { "name": "Dmitry Skavish", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/a27f20593c6c757bc550aa7cd55c7d46?s=120&d=mp", "code": "657", "biography": "CTO and software architect working on federated platforms and social systems. Currently building Welley, a new ActivityPub-based platform focused on interoperability and richer\r\ncommunity structures.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "The Fediverse has come a long way, but most platforms still center around a pretty narrow set of interaction patterns. Welley is an attempt to push that a bit further while staying fully compatible with\r\nMastodon, Lemmy, and other ActivityPub software.\r\n\r\nIn this talk, I will walk through how Welley approaches things like groups and channels as first-class actors instead of workarounds on top of user accounts. The goal is to make communities feel more\r\nnatural in the Fediverse without breaking compatibility with what already exists.\r\n\r\nI will also introduce a new DID method being developed alongside Welley. This is an early attempt to rethink identity in the Fediverse, focusing on portability and long-term interoperability, while still\r\nfitting into the current ecosystem.\r\n\r\nKey Topics:\r\n\r\n- Building ActivityPub software that plays nicely with Mastodon,\r\nLemmy, and others\r\n- Groups and channels as real actors, not hacks\r\n- Expanding the social graph beyond individuals\r\n- A new DID method for federated identity", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/468/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "CEME 1212", "rooms": [ "CEME 1212" ], "start": "2026-08-07T16:30:00", "end": "2026-08-07T17:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Toolchain and Other Developer Tools", "conf_key": 295, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Free and Open Source COBOL - Opening FOSS to Finance and Admin (the old DP shops)", "authors": [ { "name": "Marty Heyman", "name_pronunciation": "Last name is like Hey Man! not Hi Man!", "pronouns": "He/Him", "twitter": "MartyH", "mastodon": "Marty@cobolworx.social", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/4d2edf707bc9c25e015496067ef2f962?s=120&d=mp", "code": "626", "biography": "Marty broke into computers as a punched card loading 1401 operator waiting for the next programmer's class at IBM in 1967. He got into Unix and the Internet in 1989 and crosses the boundary between old-school DP and today's distributed IT world. He co-founded Symas Corp. in 1999. Symas is an Open Source Software Tech Support company and sponsor of OpenLDAP. We are also a COBO center of professional skills supporting GnuCOBOL and developers of GCC COBOL.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "COBOL is considered a dead language. The current ISO-IEC Cobol Language Standard was published at the very end of 2023 and describes a very \"modern\" language. But the vast majority of the COBOL code behind the Finance and Administrative applications in the back room was written by the mid-1980s and the bigger enhancements were done by Y2K. Why COBOL on Linux/BSD/WSL/LinuxOne\u00ae\r\n\r\nWell, there are hundreds of billions, yes BILLIONS, of lines of cobol code wout there. Mostly on IBM mainframes. Some on Windows (Microfocus\u00ae now Rocket Software). And some on Linux already (GnuCOBOL, COBOL to C to gcc to native, works well). The owneers of some of that COBOL code want to migrate those apps to Open Systems. The Microfocus users want an alternative too. So, after experiece with GnuCOBOL, COBOLworx\u00ae, a branded unit of Symas\u00ae Corp, built a COBOL compiler (front-end) for the Gnu Compiler Collectiion, gcobol, and contributed it in 2025 (GCC 15) and has enhanced it in the recent GCC 16.\r\n\r\nThe history of COBOL starts from Hollerith, IBM and punched cards. It revolutionized the back office! Maybe the biggest productivity activity every. I'd like to share some of what that felt like, what it meant, and what it means today", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/385/", "cancelled": false, "twitter_id": "MartyH", "mastodon_id": "Marty@cobolworx.social" }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-07T16:30:00", "end": "2026-08-07T17:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Open Source Governance and Community Stability", "conf_key": 289, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Beyond Adoption: What Actually Happens After You Add a Code of Conduct?", "authors": [ { "name": "Shurui Zhou", "name_pronunciation": "Shoo-ray Joe", "pronouns": "She/Her/Hers", "twitter": "shuishuiblue", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/b0756c69e4dc2e07cd4e573e56c88e2b?s=120&d=mp", "code": "555", "biography": "Shurui Zhou is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto. Her research aims to help distributed and interdisciplinary software and design teams collaborate more efficiently and build high-quality systems. Her team focus on modern open-source collaboration models, such as fork-based development, and on interdisciplinary settings for building AI-enabled and domain-specific software, including scientific computing. We also extend software engineering best practices to support collaborative CAD design.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "## Beyond Adoption: What Actually Happens After You Add a Code of Conduct?\r\n\r\nCodes of Conduct (CoCs) have become a common practice in open source communities\u2014often recommended as a way to create welcoming, inclusive environments. But what happens *after* adoption? Do CoCs actually change how communities grow, evolve, and retain contributors?\r\n\r\nIn this talk, we present findings from a large-scale empirical study of over 150,000 open source repositories and their Code of Conduct histories. We move beyond the typical \u201cshould we adopt a CoC?\u201d debate and instead focus on what practitioners often struggle with in practice: **how CoCs are used, maintained, and whether they make a measurable difference**.\r\n\r\n### Key insights\r\n\r\n- **Adoption is common, maintenance is rare.** \r\n Most projects adopt a CoC once and rarely revisit it. Only a small subset treats it as a living document that evolves with the community.\r\n\r\n- **CoCs act as a signal for newcomers.** \r\n Projects with a CoC tend to attract more new contributors\u2014both in the short and long term\u2014suggesting that CoCs serve as an onboarding signal of inclusivity.\r\n\r\n- **Retention is a different challenge.** \r\n While adoption can increase newcomer inflow, it may also lead to short-term disengagement among existing contributors, with little long-term impact on retention.\r\n\r\nWe also unpack *how* CoCs evolve when they do change\u2014ranging from simple wording updates to deeper changes in enforcement, scope, and governance\u2014and what these patterns reveal about community priorities.\r\n\r\nThis talk is designed for maintainers, contributors, and open source leaders who want to move beyond checkbox adoption and think more strategically about governance. In addition to practical takeaways on when to revisit your CoC and how to align it with community practices, the session aims to **spark discussion, gather feedback from practitioners, and foster collaboration** around improving governance in open source communities.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/406/", "cancelled": false, "twitter_id": "shuishuiblue" }, { "room": "MCLD 2012", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2012" ], "start": "2026-08-07T16:30:00", "end": "2026-08-07T17:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 414, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-06T16:30:00", "end": "2026-08-06T17:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Open Source Governance and Community Stability", "conf_key": 283, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Plan to fork (So you don't have to fork)", "authors": [ { "name": "Rich Bowen", "name_pronunciation": "Rich BOW en", "pronouns": "he/him", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@rbowen@mastodon.social", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ca2ff6fc6168da8d5d183f6cc182e048?s=120&d=mp", "code": "571", "biography": "Rich Bowen has been involved in open source since before we started calling it that. He's a member of the Apache Software Foundation. Rich is an Open Source Strategist at AWS, where he helps the company engage authentically with open source communities. He's the author of several books on Apache httpd, and has given hundreds of talks about open source community, governance, and sustainability at events around the world.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "If your product or service relies on an open source project, ensuring the sustainability of that project is just good business sense. Forking should be a last resort \u2014 considered only after all other options have been exhausted.\r\n\r\nBut here's the thing: writing a detailed plan to fork has two surprising benefits. First, it ensures that should the worst happen, you've already considered how you'll deal with it. But perhaps more importantly, the exercise of planning a fork forces you to confront exactly what makes your upstream project healthy \u2014 or fragile. It makes you a better upstream participant.\r\n\r\nIn this talk, we'll walk through what a fork plan looks like, what it reveals about project health, and how the act of planning for the worst can help you prevent it. We'll draw on real-world examples \u2014 some that forked and thrived, some that forked and struggled, and some that never had to fork because they invested upstream in time.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/407/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@rbowen@mastodon.social" }, { "room": "MCLD 3038", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3038" ], "start": "2026-08-06T16:30:00", "end": "2026-08-06T17:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Databases", "conf_key": 252, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "What's a Data Lake and What Does It Mean For My Open Source Stack?", "authors": [ { "name": "Robert Hodges", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e40ae1c9dc6e9b32fab44a487ab5a2a9?s=120&d=mp", "code": "604", "biography": "Robert Hodges has worked on database systems and applications since 1983. His experience spans pre-relational databases like M204 to online transaction processing in SQL to Hadoop and analytics. His work in the last few years has focused on analytic databases, Kubernetes, and open source. Robert\u2019s day job is CEO of Altinity, an enterprise provider for ClickHouse.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Data lakes on open table formats like Iceberg are a popular way to manage large datasets for analytics, data science, and AI. This talk explains how data lakes work and how to adapt open source analytic stacks to use them. First, we'll tour projects like Arrow, Iceberg, and Unity Catalog that make data lakes possible. Next, we'll see how analytic engines like DuckDB, ClickHouse, and Spark are adapting. Finally, we'll survey a few projects that enable applications written in Python, Golang, or Rust to deliver fast queries. You'll have to build the app yourself, but this talk will show you a path to use data lakes and open source successfully.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/402/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 2018", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2018" ], "start": "2026-08-06T16:30:00", "end": "2026-08-06T17:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "FOSS and Research Computing", "conf_key": 279, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "ColdFront and Onboarding Automation Development at UBC ARC", "authors": [ { "name": "Jacob Boschee", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fb632ef2caf7c767aad5f5c674d63839?s=120&d=mp", "code": "573", "biography": "Jacob Boschee is a Senior Systems Analyst with the University of British Columbia's Advanced Research Computing team. He helps provide research computing solutions and platforms to a wide variety of researchers across campus. He is directly involved with making contributions to the Open OnDemand and ColdFront projects to support the open-source community around research computing.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "A key part of providing research computing services is the ability to manage access for groups of researchers utilizing high performance computing resources. One of the challenges that the University of British Columbia Advanced Research Computing team faced when expanding our user-base was the need to provide an easy to utilize platform for researchers to request and manage their resource allocations. In an effort to modernize our offerings the UBC ARC team looked to open-source options to suit our needs.\r\n\r\nColdFront is an open-source allocation management platform developed by the University at Buffalo Center for Computational Research. As part of implementing this software we extended ColdFront\u2019s capabilities to provide automated system actions by utilizing Event-Driven Ansible (EDA). Our team developed a number of plugins to provide this functionality and contribute back to the project at large.\r\n\r\nIn this talk we will provide details around the development of the onboarding system in use by UBC ARC and how our contributions to ColdFront can help the wider field of research computing service providers.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/422/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "CEME 1212", "rooms": [ "CEME 1212" ], "start": "2026-08-06T16:30:00", "end": "2026-08-06T17:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Toolchain and Other Developer Tools", "conf_key": 317, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Picolibc - a C library for embedded systems", "authors": [ { "name": "Keith Packard", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "he/him", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@keithp@fosstodon.org", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e6fb242319b4b3cd957499c9965849b6?s=120&d=mp", "code": "612", "biography": "Keith Packard has been developing free software since 1986, working on\r\nthe X Window System, Linux, amateur rocketry and educational\r\nrobotics. He is currently a senior principal engineer with the Amazon\r\nLeo group building communication satellites using Linux, FreeRTOS\r\nand Picolibc. Keith teaches python programming and robotics with\r\nstudents from ages 10-18. He received a Usenix Lifetime Achievement\r\naward in 1999, an O'Reilly Open Source award in 2011 and sits on the\r\nboard of the Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) board. Keith\r\nuses he, him and his pronouns", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Picolibc is a C library designed for embedded environments. Providing\r\na complete C17 library interface along with much of the POSIX 2008\r\nadditions, Picolibc offers standards conformance, broad architecture\r\nsupport and integrated testing performed under emulation on the target\r\narchitectures.\r\n\r\nThis talk will start by providing an overview of Picolibc, including\r\nAPI support, standards conformance and memory usage. Then, a\r\ndescription of the testing infrastructure, including the bare-metal\r\ntest frameworks, emulator bugs fixed and guidance on supporting new\r\ntargets will be provided. Next, some specific examples of integrating\r\nPicolibc into various embedded RTOSes, including FreeRTOS, Zephyr and\r\nRIOT will be presented. The talk will finish with the current status\r\nof Picolibc along with future plans.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/384/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@keithp@fosstodon.org" }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-08T16:30:00", "end": "2026-08-08T17:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Camp KDE", "conf_key": 357, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "KDE Plasma on the \"Immutable\" Desktop, and an examination of the Kalpa Desktop", "authors": [ { "name": "Shawn W Dunn", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "He/Him", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@kalpa@fosstodon.org", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/77b01775764de6a9eaef27dfdd15a919?s=120&d=mp", "code": "560", "biography": "Shawn is the Lead Developer of Kalpa Desktop, an openSUSE Board Member, and openSUSE and Fedora package maintainer.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "This talk will provide an informative \"Tour\" of the various projects providing the Plasma Desktop on what are colloquially called \"Immutable Desktops\"\r\n\r\nThe underlying technologies may differ, but in general are providing some version of a read-only system base, and atomic updating\r\n\r\nWe will be looking at a very high level overview of a few projects, including, but not limited to:\r\n\r\n- Fedora Kinoite\r\n- KDE Linux\r\n- Aurora\r\n- Kalpa Dekstop\r\n\r\nKalpa Desktop delivers KDE Plasma, on top of an atomic and transactional system\r\n\r\nBased on openSUSE Tumbleweed and MicroOS we leverage btrfs snapshots, with a read-only system base to deliver a transactional and atomic upgrade mechanism that helps with long term stability, and allows for easy system rollback.\r\n\r\nWhile many \"immutable\" systems can make it difficult to modify the system base (such as installing distribution packages, when needed) our transactional system can allow for much of the flexibility of a traditional read-write linux desktop, while also providing the benefits of a read-only system.\r\n\r\nThis talk will hit some of the highlights of the Kalpa Desktop, and how we're using the Plasma Desktop to provide a unified desktop experience", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/391/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@kalpa@fosstodon.org" }, { "room": "MCLD 2012", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2012" ], "start": "2026-08-08T16:30:00", "end": "2026-08-08T17:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 351, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "MCLD 3002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3002" ], "start": "2026-08-08T16:30:00", "end": "2026-08-08T17:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "AI", "conf_key": 341, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Too Many Eyeballs? Free Software Security in the LLM Era", "authors": [ { "name": "Sean O'Brien", "name_pronunciation": "SHAWN oh-BRY-un", "pronouns": "He/him", "twitter": "profdiggity", "mastodon": "@profdiggity@privacysafe.social", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f7ebc7f0e77e9cfb2f8cef542127b3f7?s=120&d=mp", "code": "614", "biography": "Sean O\u2019Brien is Deputy Director of the Free Software Foundation and has more than two decades of experience in free software. He is founder of Yale Privacy Lab and an Associate Research Scholar at Yale Law School, as well as Director of the Cybersecurity and Computer Science Programs and Assistant Professor at Bay Path University. At Ivy Cyber, \"Prof Diggity\" develops the curriculum of remote classes and guides the PrivacySafe secure hardware and software products. Sean's expertise has appeared in The New York Times, Wired, AP, NBC, Popular Science, Forbes, The Financial Times, and more.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Free software has always carried a powerful security promise: when source code is available for public review, more people can inspect it, improve it, and help find vulnerabilities before they cause harm. That promise still matters. But over the past year, large language models (LLMs) and so-called \"generative AI\" have changed the conditions under which free software projects, maintainers, bug bounty programs, and hosts of software repositories and essential communication infrastructure operate.\r\n\r\nThis talk examines how LLM-powered software has intensified long-standing challenges in free software cybersecurity. Maintainers and security teams now face a flood of automated vulnerability reports that are duplicative, low quality, \"hallucinated,\" or only superficially understood by the pentesters submitting them. For bug bounty programs, this creates a costly triage burden. Reports that once represented careful human review are increasingly mixed with LLM-generated \"AI slop,\" making it harder to identify real risk, reward meaningful research, and preserve trust between free software projects and ethical hackers.\r\n\r\nAt the same time, hype around LLM-powered security scanners and proprietary exploit repositories has created new pressure on free software communities. Proprietary products such as Claude Mythos and OpenAI Daybreak promise faster vulnerability discovery and automated exploit generation. For maintainers, these tools often mean more attacks, more disclosures, more automated probing by unknown third parties, more speculative findings, more duplicated reports, and the possibility that exploit knowledge derived from public code is being stockpiled in private collections that can produce zero day vulnerabilities affecting their projects at any moment.\r\n\r\nSerious vulnerabilities in essential free software are being published with alarming regularity, often without adequate preparation or patching timelines. This includes privilege escalation and root access exploits that target millions of systems. The problem is not simply code quality or technical debt. Free software infrastructure itself is under strain. Source code repositories, package mirrors, issue trackers, and CI/CD systems are being hit by constant scanning, scraping, automated dependency analysis, and opportunistic attacks. These pressures increase bandwidth costs, slow software sharing and patching, and expand the attack surface for software supply chain compromise.\r\n\r\nThe talk will connect these issues to broader network abuse. Botnets such as Aisuru and waves of DDoS attacks are making access to free software more fragile and expensive. Hosting code, documentation, packages, and community services now carries rising costs in labor, bandwidth, energy, and mitigation.\r\n\r\nDrawing on popular examples like the Linux kernel and curl, personal instances of DDoSing and attacks from botnets, professional experience running bug bounty programs, issues with so-called \"cloud\" hosted free software such as Canvas, and the day-to-day operations required to host major projects such as GNU at the Free Software Foundation (FSF), this session argues that we need a frank conversation about free software against the backdrop of LLM tooling.\r\n\r\nThe goal is not to retreat from software freedom. We must preserve source availability, public review, and community-based cybersecurity while asking what must change when many new \"eyeballs\" are automated, careless, inaccurate, or hostile.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/438/", "cancelled": false, "twitter_id": "profdiggity", "mastodon_id": "@profdiggity@privacysafe.social" }, { "room": "MCLD 3038", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3038" ], "start": "2026-08-09T16:30:00", "end": "2026-08-09T17:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 368, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "CEME 1202", "rooms": [ "CEME 1202" ], "start": "2026-08-09T16:30:00", "end": "2026-08-09T17:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Wild Card", "conf_key": 359, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Your Open-Source Project Needs a Security Statement, and here\u2019s why!", "authors": [ { "name": "Luc Letarte", "name_pronunciation": "Luke", "pronouns": "He, Him, His", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/007f07597de914575c5d20733b8bad78?s=120&d=mp", "code": "576", "biography": "Luc Letarte is a Research Cybersecurity and Compliance Specialist with Advanced Research Computing at the University of British Columbia and an independent cybersecurity and privacy consultant. He specializes in strengthening academic research and public sector environments through governance, risk management, and compliance programs. A certified cybersecurity and privacy professional, Luc brings extensive experience working in complex environments, delivering actionable solutions for regulatory compliance and cyber risk management. He is a frequent conference speaker and instructor, delivering workshops and presentations on digital trust, cybersecurity risk management, research data management, and institutional risk governance. Fluent in English and French, Luc actively contributes to the higher education, research, and cybersecurity communities and serves on the National Security Council at the Digital Research Alliance of Canada.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "In a rapidly evolving technology landscape, earning the trust of software adopters has become increasingly challenging. Institutional buyers, funders, and regulators now routinely require security and risk assessments before approving the use or deployment of software. While large technology vendors often have the resources and processes to meet these expectations, many open-source projects struggle to present clear, structured security information. As a result, otherwise strong projects may be overlooked when organizations evaluate tools for adoption or investment.\r\nThis presentation highlights the critical role of a well-crafted security statement for open-source projects. It outlines what a security statement should include, why it matters in review processes, and how maintainers can communicate effectively with security and risk professionals. Attendees will leave with practical guidance for improving the visibility, credibility, and adoption readiness of their open-source projects.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/442/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-09T16:30:00", "end": "2026-08-09T17:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Science of Community", "conf_key": 343, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Mopping Up the Slop: How bad is it, and what can we do?", "authors": [ { "name": "Dr. Kaylea Champion", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "she / her", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@kaylea@social.coop", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/b8225a91a87dc7b27ae2e0303a87962c?s=120&d=mp", "code": "546", "biography": "Dr. Kaylea Champion studies how people cooperate to build groovy public goods like GNU/Linux and Wikipedia, including what gets maintained and the risks we face. She is an Assistant Professor in Computing and Software Systems at the University of Washington Bothell, where she teaches software engineering with an emphasis on cybersecurity, evidence-based practices, ethics, and free/libre software. Dr. Champion is eager to build connections with communities, and has previously given talks at FOSSY, Quantum Wednesday, Norwescon, WorldCon, PyConUS, the OpenJS Summit, Wikimania, MozFest, Women in Data Science, PuPPY, DebConf, and SeaGL. A Linux user since 1994, she enjoys tromping through the woods, smashing goblins, conjuring data, and cooking for a crowd.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "The commercialization of generative AI has introduced new challenges to the ways we organize and run our communities, including a rise in automated contributions, synthetic engagement, and automated attacks. AI slop -- especially \"plausible\" slop, that is, contributions and bug reports that seem sincere and well-founded but are ultimately fabricated and misleading -- are a substantial source of frustration for maintainers. How widespread is AI slop in open source? How can we detect it and respond? In this talk, I offer an update on my project investigating the problem, and the multiple follow-up efforts and new projects this problem is inspiring.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/454/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@kaylea@social.coop" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-06T17:15:00", "end": "2026-08-06T17:30:00", "duration": 15, "kind": "Break", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 256, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-07T17:15:00", "end": "2026-08-07T17:30:00", "duration": 15, "kind": "Break", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 257, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-09T17:15:00", "end": "2026-08-09T18:30:00", "duration": 75, "kind": "Opening Remarks", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 228, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Closing Remarks" }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-08T17:15:00", "end": "2026-08-08T17:30:00", "duration": 15, "kind": "Break", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 258, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "MCLD 3038", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3038" ], "start": "2026-08-06T17:30:00", "end": "2026-08-06T18:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Databases", "conf_key": 260, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Take care of the bits and the gigabytes take care of themselves", "authors": [ { "name": "Kyle Davis", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "He/Him", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/3d9517e4bc096ec1bc02eed3d011f177?s=120&d=mp", "code": "618", "biography": "Kyle is the General Manager for the Valkey ecosystem at Percona. He has a long history with open source software development; he was a founding contributor to the OpenSearch project and worked to build a community around Bottlerocket OS. When not working, Kyle enjoys 3D printing and getting his hands dirty in his Edmonton, Alberta-based home garden.\r\n\r\nKyle has written over 70 technology-related blog posts, tutorials, and bylines, published a book on microservice architectures, been a guest on more than a dozen podcasts, and presented at over 20 different conferences around the world (and too many meetups to list). He presents on a diverse range of topics such as open source software, data structures, 3D modelling, operating systems, and embedded electronics.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "In-memory databases are fundamentally different. The unification of operating memory and storage means that you have to consider what, and how, data is stored to achieve performance, efficiency, and scalability. And, critically, small differences in how both the underlying database system and you, as the user, manage this data adds up at scale to impact efficiency. This talk explains the differences of in-memory databases, explores the internal changes to data representation that leads to higher efficiency, and steps you can take to make your usage of these systems more efficient and lead to a lower total cost of ownership.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/401/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-06T17:30:00", "end": "2026-08-06T18:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Open Source Governance and Community Stability", "conf_key": 284, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Open Source Community Development: Stickers are Good, People Sticking Around is Even Better", "authors": [ { "name": "Stacey Haysler", "name_pronunciation": "Stay-cee Hay-zler", "pronouns": "She/her", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@shaysler@fosstodon.org", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e623438da0a375c5f1a910c3cbb9048e?s=120&d=mp", "code": "637", "biography": "By day, Stacey is the CFO and COO of PGX, Inc., a Postgres-only consultancy in Alameda, California. She is also the President of the U.S. PostgreSQL Association (PgUS), a nonprofit dedicated to the advancement of PostgreSQL through education and advocacy. Stacey is an organizer of the San Francisco Bay Area PostgreSQL Users Group. Stacey is also the creator of the original PostgreSQL Community Code of Conduct, and was the first Chair of the Community CoC Committee for three years. \r\n\r\nStacey is a recognized Major Contributor to PostgreSQL.\r\n\r\nStacey is a Django Software Foundation Member, as well as a former Board Member of the DSF. She founded and served on the Board of the Django Events Foundation North America, and was a primary organizer of DjangoConUS 2015 \u2013 2018. Stacey is a Contributing Member of Software in the Public Interest. By night, she sleeps, since that's a lot to do every day!", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Developing software is important\u2014if there\u2019s no software, there\u2019s no software community. Both components need attention and support to keep the project vital and moving in a positive direction. Software development is a well-understood process with many active participants. Community development, well . . . we have made progress in recent years, but there\u2019s a whole lot more to do beyond establishing Diversity Committees and running scholarship programs. \r\n\r\nSo, let\u2019s talk about developing Open Source communities. How do we interest current community members in becoming actively involved? How do we bring in new people, and do our best to make them feel welcome? Once they are here, how do we make it easy for them to become involved and stay involved? \r\n\r\nHow do we create a structure that allows community members, regardless of longevity or experience, find a role to fill, or a new role to move to when it\u2019s time for something new? Who keeps track of the changing needs of the community and corresponding changes in structure, and figures out how to manage them?\r\n\r\nThere are so many questions, and as many answers as there are people. I\u2019ll share my perspective and experience in community development, both in the PostgreSQL and Django communities, as well as in the corporate world, and offer some ideas and possible approaches\u2014and gather ideas from everyone present as well. We may not solve everything in one session, but we can make progress!", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/405/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@shaysler@fosstodon.org" }, { "room": "MCLD 2018", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2018" ], "start": "2026-08-06T17:30:00", "end": "2026-08-06T18:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "FOSS and Research Computing", "conf_key": 280, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Rethinking One Open Source: How Open Source and Open Source for Social Good Differ", "authors": [ { "name": "Mariam Guizani", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/82eb0a8e8aaf8f3321714b14941cea9c?s=120&d=mp", "code": "605", "biography": "Dr. Mariam Guizani is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Queen\u2019s University.\u202f She holds a PhD and a second MSc from Oregon State University and was a Fulbright fellowship recipient. Additionally, she holds a BSc and a MSc degree in software engineering. At the intersection of Software Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction, her research centers around improving the state of Diversity and Inclusion in complex socio-technical ecosystems such as Open Source. More specifically, her research focuses on designing processes and tools to help Open-Source Software (OSS) communities make their projects more inclusive and attract and retain contributors. The broader impact of her work applies to academia, industry, and large OSS organizations. Dr. Mariam Guizani has worked together with Google and the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) for several years to understand communities\u2019 experiences and needs. Her research at Microsoft Research was recognized by GitHub for its contribution to the currently deployed GitHub Discussion Dashboard, GitHub Blocks, and their future roadmap. Dr. Mariam Guizani has also collaborated with Foundations and departments such as Wikimedia, and Oregon State University IT department to empower communities to dismantle cognitive barriers in software. Her research has been published at both ACM and IEEE conferences including the Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), and Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE). Dr. Mariam Guizani has been invited to present her work at both academic and industry venues including ICSE, CSCW, Google, GitHub, ApacheCon, and the Linux Foundation Open-Source Summit.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Open source software is often viewed as a uniform ecosystem, but this overlooks important differences in project missions. We examine how conventional OSS and OSS4SG diverge in meaningful ways, challenging a \"one-size-fits-all\" perspective.\u00a0We position OSS4SG within the broader landscape of UN SDG, aligned digital public goods, emphasizing societal impact as a primary project mission. Using large-scale empirical studies of 375 projects, 92,721 contributors, and 3.5 million commits, we analyze newcomer-to-core transitions. Our results show that OSS4SG projects retain contributors at 2.2\u00d7 higher rates, exhibit 50% higher weekly transition rates, and are associated with a 19.6% higher probability of achieving core status. We further find that early broad project exploration is the strongest predictor of core achievement, and that contributors who follow a \u201clate spike\u201d pattern reach core fastest, in 21 weeks, compared to 51\u201360 weeks for early-spike contributors. Unlike conventional OSS, which concentrates on one dominant pathway, OSS4SG supports multiple viable pathways to core contribution.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/423/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-08T17:30:00", "end": "2026-08-08T18:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Camp KDE", "conf_key": 358, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Panel: 30 years of KDE", "authors": [ { "name": "Neal Gompa", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "he/him/his", "twitter": "Det_Conan_Kudo", "mastodon": "@neal@social.gompa.me", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ce49c1fd10e205bb896efc9f352f7b87?s=120&d=mp", "code": "541", "biography": "Neal Gompa is a developer for\u2013and contributor to\u2013Fedora, CentOS, AlmaLinux, and openSUSE. Neal focuses primarily on the base Linux system components (such as package and software management) and desktop Linux. He believes in \u201cupstream first,\u201d which has led him all over the open source world. In addition to open source work as a consultant through Velocity Limitless, he is also a co-host on the Sudo Show podcast where he talks about \"the business of Linux.\"", "username": "" }, { "name": "Shawn W Dunn", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "He/Him", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@kalpa@fosstodon.org", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/77b01775764de6a9eaef27dfdd15a919?s=120&d=mp", "code": "560", "biography": "Shawn is the Lead Developer of Kalpa Desktop, an openSUSE Board Member, and openSUSE and Fedora package maintainer.", "username": "" }, { "name": "Tracey Clark", "name_pronunciation": "tray see clark", "pronouns": "She/Her", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "tclark77+floss-social@tlcnet.info", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/426ccf0db765e9f28ee4fd51cee8524f?s=120&d=mp", "code": "632", "biography": "Tracey has been a software tester and automated test writer since 2011 who has used Linux since 2003. Her first memorable bug report was against urpmi in Mandrake, for a command line flag that did rm -rf on the directory where it was run. She has used a number of Linux distros, and currently volunteers with the Solus distro. She is also a KDE Contributor.", "username": "" }, { "name": "Troy Dawson", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/708c760f3a67304fb111d08789ac7736?s=120&d=mp", "code": "585", "biography": "Spiky Hair, Hawaiian Shirts ... with Penguins on them.\r\nTroy currently works for Red Hat as the CentOS Stream Team Lead. \r\nHe is on the CentOS Board. \r\nHe is the EPEL Steering Committee chair. \r\nHe is chair of the Centos Alternative Images SIG, and an active member of the CentOS ISA SIG.\r\nTroy is also on the Fedora KDE SIG dealing largely with KDE in EPEL.\r\nYes, he is the same Troy Dawson that co-founded Scientific Linux.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "This year is the 30th anniversary of KDE! Come listen to people old and new to the community talk about KDE.\r\n\r\nWe'll discuss:\r\n\r\n* The history of KDE and the impact it had on Free Software desktop computing\r\n* What KDE is doing now\r\n* How we're driving the future of Free Software desktop computing across our relevant spaces\r\n\r\nThis is an interactive session where the audience has the opportunity to engage and ask questions.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/380/", "cancelled": false, "twitter_id": "Det_Conan_Kudo", "mastodon_id": "@neal@social.gompa.me" }, { "room": "CEME 1212", "rooms": [ "CEME 1212" ], "start": "2026-08-07T17:30:00", "end": "2026-08-07T18:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Toolchain and Other Developer Tools", "conf_key": 296, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "The Tale of the GCC Runtime Library Exception", "authors": [ { "name": "Bradley M. K\u00fchn", "name_pronunciation": "BRAD-ley (rhymes with \"gladly\"), emm (the letter), kewwn (make a circle with your lips as you make the u sound w/ the umlaut). If you struggle with K\u00fchn, the english word \"keen\" said in the Queen's English is pretty close.", "pronouns": "he/them", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@bkuhn@copyleft.org", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/0580d7a67da1b15b1695edc4e22779f9?s=120&d=mp", "code": "635", "biography": "[Bradley M. K\u00fchn](https://ebb.org/bkuhn) is the [Policy Fellow and\r\nHacker-in-Residence](https://sfconservancy.org/about/staff/#bkuhn) at\r\n[Software Freedom Conservancy](https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer)\r\n(\"SFC\") and Co-Editor-in-Chief of [the copyleft-next\r\nlicense](https://next.copyleft.org). K\u00fchn began his work in the software\r\nfreedom movement as a volunteer in 1992 \u2014 as an early adopter of\r\nLinux-based systems and contributor to various FOSS projects, including\r\nPerl.\r\n\r\nK\u00fchn worked during the 1990s as a system administrator and software\r\ndeveloper for various companies, and also spent one year teaching high\r\nschool Advanced Placement Computer Science. As FSF's Executive Director\r\nfrom 2001\u20132005, K\u00fchn led FSF's GPL enforcement, launched its Associate\r\nMember program, and invented the copyleft network services clause found\r\nin the Affero GPL. K\u00fchn was SFC's primary volunteer from 2006\u20132010, and\r\nbecame its first staff person in 2011. K\u00fchn's work at SFC focuses on\r\n[enforcement of copyleft and the GPL\r\nAgreements](https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/), FOSS\r\nlicensing policy, and non-profit infrastructural solutions for FOSS.\r\nK\u00fchn holds a summa cum laude B.S. in Computer Science from [Loyola\r\nUniversity in\r\nMaryland](https://www.loyola.edu/academics/computer-science), and an\r\nM.S. in Computer Science from the [University of\r\nCincinnati](http://www.cs.uc.edu/). [K\u00fchn's Master's\r\nthesis](http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/articles/thesis/) discussed methods for\r\ndynamic interoperability of FOSS programming languages. K\u00fchn received\r\nthe 2012 Open Source Award, and the 2021 Award for the Advancement of\r\nFree Software --- both in recognition for his lifelong policy work on\r\ncopyleft licensing and its enforcement.\r\n\r\nK\u00fchn writes about his work on [SFC\\'s\r\nblog](https://sfconservancy.org/blog/?author=bkuhn) and as\r\n[\\@bkuhn@copyleft.org on the Fediverse (via\r\nMastodon)](https://fedi.copyleft.org/@bkuhn){rel=\"me\"}.", "username": "" }, { "name": "Karen Sandler", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "she/her", "twitter": "o0karen0o", "mastodon": "karen@floss.social", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5e77b6e5743dd274a0bc00806cb082de?s=120&d=mp", "code": "411", "biography": "Karen M. Sandler is an attorney and the executive director of Software Freedom Conservancy, a 501c3 nonprofit organization focused on ethical technology. As a patient deeply concerned with the technology in her own body, Karen is known as a cyborg lawyer for her advocacy for free software as a life-or-death issue, particularly in relation to the software on medical devices. She co-organizes Outreachy, the award-winning outreach program for people who face under-representation, systemic bias, or discrimination in tech. She is an adjunct Lecturer-In-Law of Columbia Law School and a visiting scholar at University of California Santa Cruz.\r\n\r\nPrior to joining Software Freedom Conservancy, Karen was the executive director of the GNOME Foundation. Before that, she was the general counsel of the Software Freedom Law Center. She began her career as a lawyer at Clifford Chance and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.\r\n\r\nKaren received her law degree from Columbia Law School where she was a James Kent Scholar and co-founder of the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review. She also holds a bachelor of science in engineering from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.\r\n\r\nSandler has won awards for her work on behalf of software freedom, including the O\u2019Reilly Open Source Award in 2011. She received an honorary doctorate from KU Leuven in 2023.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "The GCC Runtime Library Exception (RTLE) was created for GCC and related toolchain projects to move to GPLv3. Additionally, the RTLE solved a standing technical limitation regarding worry of Intermediate Representations (IRs) from GCC sneakily allowing proprietary compiler optimizations.\r\n\r\nThe solution is complex, but it works to solve the problem on all fronts. The people on this panel were all involved with the creation of the RTLE and will discuss its history and help developers understand why it works, and how to explain to their employers that it solves their problems, too.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/389/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@bkuhn@copyleft.org" }, { "room": "MCLD 2018", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2018" ], "start": "2026-08-07T17:30:00", "end": "2026-08-07T18:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Fedicon", "conf_key": 302, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Building the Fediverse", "authors": [ { "name": "Chris Trottier", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/6c987714db4061c93170932ac97ec541?s=120&d=mp", "code": "658", "biography": "", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "A panel of experts who share insights on what to do (and not do).", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/473/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 3014", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3014" ], "start": "2026-08-06T17:30:00", "end": "2026-08-06T18:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Right to Repair", "conf_key": 322, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Right to Repair and the Future of Ownership", "authors": [ { "name": "Kyle Wiens", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/33b717fdf44e65d11cdfa1b3c1ccde0a?s=120&d=mp", "code": "660", "biography": "", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Right to repair laws have passed in ten US states (and Quebec!). Hear personal accounts from the leader of the worldwide movement as the fight for ownership rages on. From tractor data to television software, we're levering open systems that were supposed to be closed.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/476/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "MCLD 2012", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2012" ], "start": "2026-08-08T17:30:00", "end": "2026-08-08T18:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 352, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "MCLD 3002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3002" ], "start": "2026-08-08T17:30:00", "end": "2026-08-08T18:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "AI", "conf_key": 336, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "\"Magnifica Humanitas\" and FOSS", "authors": [ { "name": "Eric Schultz", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "They/them", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@wwahammy@social.treehouse.systems", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f74284f4ea38ec95a446e077352993fb?s=120&d=mp", "code": "547", "biography": "Eric Schultz is a Principal Software Engineer at Software for Good and a Digital Autonomy activist who is passionate about the promise and reality of free and open source software for user empowerment, especially those from marginalized groups. Previously, he worked as Chief Technology Officer at CommitChange until becoming CommitChange Technical Lead upon the project\u2019s acquisition. Before starting at CommitChange, in addition to software engineering, Eric served as Community Manager for multiple open source foundations, consulted with organizations on building open source software projects and advised the FCC on technical and practical issues around open source router technology. Eric lives in Appleton, Wisconsin, where outside of work he enjoys watching the Green Bay Packers and Milwaukee Bucks and researching family history.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "On May 25, the Vatican released \"Magnifica Humanitas\"; Pope Leo XIV's long anticipated encyclical on \u201cpreserving the human person in the age of artificial intelligence\u201d. While primarily focused on artificial intelligence, the encyclical is a wide ranging document on human dignity in the digital world using arguments that have overlap with the arguments of the FOSS and digital autonomy movements.\r\n\r\nUsing the lens of a secular, digital autonomy activist, Eric Schultz walks through the core philosophical arguments of \u201cMagnifica Humanitas\u201d, shares the parallels with our very own movement\u2019s philosophical principles and considers whether \u201cMagnifica Humanitas\u201d helps move us closer to a world where FOSS and digital autonomy are the norm.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/427/", "cancelled": false, "mastodon_id": "@wwahammy@social.treehouse.systems" }, { "room": "MCLD 2012", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2012" ], "start": "2026-08-07T17:30:00", "end": "2026-08-07T18:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 415, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "MCLD 3038", "rooms": [ "MCLD 3038" ], "start": "2026-08-08T17:30:00", "end": "2026-08-08T18:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 324, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "CEME 1202", "rooms": [ "CEME 1202" ], "start": "2026-08-08T17:30:00", "end": "2026-08-08T18:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Fedicon", "conf_key": 304, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "FireSide Fedi (Panel)", "authors": [ { "name": "Anthony Zone", "name_pronunciation": "Zone like Ozone layer. Anthony, like Anthony.", "pronouns": "He/Him", "twitter": "btfree_org", "mastodon": "@ozoned@btfree.social", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ff1ac28eea3fada7454e10959d83e78c?s=120&d=mp", "code": "638", "biography": "With over fifteen years of experience spanning the healthcare and finance industries, he has built a distinguished career in information technology. His seven-year tenure at Red Hat solidified his commitment to open-source solutions and collaborative development practices. Throughout his professional journey, he has consistently championed transparency, security, and user autonomy in digital infrastructure.\r\n\r\nIn recent years, he founded BT Free (Big Tech Free), a public charity dedicated to advocating for decentralized and open platforms. The organization promotes alternatives to centralized tech ecosystems, with particular focus on the fediverse and community-driven technologies. He also operates tubefree.org, providing resources and support for those seeking privacy-respecting, non-corporate online experiences.\r\n\r\nHis work reflects a belief that technology should serve individuals rather than extract value from them. Through BT Free, he continues to educate communities about the importance of open standards, data sovereignty, and sustainable digital independence. His advocacy bridges technical expertise with grassroots organizing, helping people transition away from proprietary platforms toward more equitable internet infrastructure.", "username": "" }, { "name": "Ben Pate", "name_pronunciation": "Ben Pate", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@benpate@mastodon.social", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fcb561cb76e143f806ce8cac5c7ecf05?s=120&d=mp", "code": "648", "biography": "I am a builder, who believes in the original promise of the Internet - that free and open communication could democratize access to knowledge and power around the world. So my contribution to this fight is in building the tools to reclaim individual freedom and sovereignty from invasive tech. By making it easier for regular, non-technical people to join the open social web, we help move humanity forward - one human at a time.", "username": "" }, { "name": "Dan Supernault", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/d4ea9dfbe40ad0e70f709a78ac78e4b9?s=120&d=mp", "code": "656", "biography": "", "username": "" }, { "name": "Django Doucet", "name_pronunciation": "d\u0292\u00e6\u014b.\u0261o\u028a", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "django@social.coop", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/68617f7d5ef12f2c4106af5b34753532?s=120&d=mp", "code": "636", "biography": "Django is a Social Web Developer and Instructor of Digital Design at NAIT (Northern Alberta Institute of Technology). He has contributed to various ActivityPub projects over the years, notably WordPress-ActivityPub, and is currently developing a Progressive Web App to push forward the unrealized potential of the ActivityPub Client API.", "username": "" }, { "name": "Matt Baer", "name_pronunciation": "Baer = \"bear\", like the animal", "pronouns": "he/him", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@matt@writing.exchange", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/76c7b124b88fd026d7540cc8b43e2417?s=120&d=mp", "code": "659", "biography": "Matt is a software developer who's spent over a decade building for the social web, from closed apps to, over the last several years, the fediverse. He's the founder of Write.as, a minimalist, writer-friendly blogging platform launched in 2015. In 2018, Write.as joined the fediverse and went open source as [WriteFreely](https://writefreely.org), which now powers hundreds of independent writing communities and blogs around the world. He is also the admin of [Writing Exchange](https://writing.exchange), a Mastodon-based community for writers, as well as other online communities.\r\n\r\nIn his free time, he helps organize [NYC Photo Stroll](https://photostroll.nyc), an in-person meetup for photographers around New York City, where he is based.", "username": "" }, { "name": "Vagrant Cascadian", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "they/them or none", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "@vagrantc@floss.social", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/4552bdb4826cf64bd57d39d117bbc2ae?s=120&d=mp", "code": "613", "biography": "Vagrant strives to make Reproducible Builds a best practices reality for everyone. Vagrant discovered free software late last millennium and has been contributing to free software since the beginning of this millennium. A long-time Debian Developer and contributor to Guix, tinkering with ARM and RISC-V systems, Vagrant contrasts spending too much time on computers with aikido, bicycle commuting and a DIY solar hobby.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Your favorite podcast ( you know the one. The one that's live streamed at FiresideFedi.live and the VODS hosted at tubefree.org/@firesidefedi )\r\nMORE LIVE-ER\r\nthan EVER!\r\n\r\nFIRESIDE FEDI LIVE\r\n\r\n& IN PERSON!\r\n\r\n They said it couldn't be done! But we're doing it!\r\nTalking with software developers live and on stage\r\n\r\nFive of them!\r\n\r\nWithout a NET!\r\n\r\nAnd this time the STAKES are even HIGHER! Live studio audience of RABID fedizens!\r\n\r\nRabid for content!\r\n\r\nWITH SPECIAL GUEST:\r\nJOHN MASTODON! *Cancelled*\r\n\r\nThis won't be just any normal show!\r\nWe'll also be speaking with these following extraordinary people:\r\n\r\n- Dan Supernault - @dansup@mastodon.social\r\nCurrently building @pixelfed, @loops, @supapp, @fedidb, and more.\r\n\r\n- Django Doucet - @django@social.coop -\r\nAt CoLab.coop , Django is a developer for WordPress sites. His approach is people-centric, which influences the usability, performance and accessibility of his designs.\r\n\r\n- Vagrant Cascasian - @vagrantc@floss.social - '\r\nInvolved in various FOSS projects such as ReproducibleBuilds, Debian, Guix and so much more. Passionate about Aikido and Solar hobbyist.\r\n\r\n- Matt Baer - @matt@writing.exchange -\r\nFounder https://writing.exchange/@write_as , https://musing.studio\r\nLead dev https://writing.exchange/@writefreely\r\nCo-organizer https://gram.social/nycphotostroll\r\nAdmin @ https://Writing.Exchange\r\n\r\n- Ben Pate - @benpate@mastodon.social -\r\nBen is the nerd who's building https://emissary.dev/ - an ActivityPub server for building custom social applications on the Fediverse.\r\nFirst app on this platform is a music sharing server for indie bands, called https://bandwagon.fm/ . He's also working on https://atlasmaps.org/, a social mapping server for adding Federated annotations to places in the real world.\r\n\r\nWe're getting to the truth and asking them the HARD HITTING questions!\r\nQuestions like:\r\n\r\nPie or Cake?\r\nRed, Blue or Green?\r\nBest Fediverse Application?\r\n\r\nDon't forget to catch us at FediCon Aug 8th! https://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/465/\r\n\r\nIT\r\n\r\nWILL\r\n\r\nBE\r\n\r\nhopefully, honestly just a really a lovely time really!", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/465/", "cancelled": false, "twitter_id": "btfree_org", "mastodon_id": "@ozoned@btfree.social" }, { "room": "MCLD 2002", "rooms": [ "MCLD 2002" ], "start": "2026-08-07T17:30:00", "end": "2026-08-07T18:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 290, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Slot" }, { "room": "CEME 1212", "rooms": [ "CEME 1212" ], "start": "2026-08-06T17:30:00", "end": "2026-08-06T18:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Toolchain and Other Developer Tools", "conf_key": 318, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Algol 68 and the GNU Algol 68 toolchain", "authors": [ { "name": "Pietro Monteiro", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "he/him", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/30635aae62e6a61c44e7f2f18d94c399?s=120&d=mp", "code": "572", "biography": "Pietro is a participant in the GNU Algol 68 Working Group. A free-software hacker and programming-languages enthusiast with more than 20 years of experience across industries, from web development for EDM festivals to embedded programming for renewable-energy monitoring. By day he edits YAML to keep cloud platforms running; by night he dreams of, and works toward a future where Algol 68 gains the prominent status it deserves.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Algol 68 is an extremely powerful programming language, one of the most elegant and expressive ever designed, yet it has been almost entirely forgotten by modern programmers. The GNU Algol 68 Working Group is a group of hackers hellbent on achieving Algol 68 world domination. This session will explore what we are doing and how you can get involved. \r\n\r\nThe Working Group 2.1 of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) designed Algol 68 in the 1960s/70s. The working group's goals were threefold: to design a programming language that could efficiently run on a large variety of computer architectures, to improve the communication about algorithms in the nascent field of computer science, and to aid in teaching algorithms (and programming) to students. This combination of goals led to the creation of the concept of orthogonality in programming language design and the development of two-level grammars (or van-Wijngaarden grammars) to formally describe the new language.\r\n\r\nThe session will cover: (1) the architecture of the GNU Algol 68 GCC front-end; (2) practical examples of modern build systems for Algol 68 programs and how to interface with other programming languages (eg. accessing C libraries from Algol 68); (3) the design principles guiding language extensions; and (4) opportunities to contribute to the project.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/382/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "CEME 1210", "rooms": [ "CEME 1210" ], "start": "2026-08-07T17:30:00", "end": "2026-08-07T18:15:00", "duration": 45, "kind": "Talk", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": "Linux Kernel", "conf_key": 303, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": true, "contact": [], "name": "Low Cost Storage with SMR: State of the Art and Future Work", "authors": [ { "name": "Damien Le Moal", "name_pronunciation": "", "pronouns": "", "twitter": "", "mastodon": "", "contact": "redacted", "picture_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5d8385538358239b31254902c14bdc80?s=120&d=mp", "code": "620", "biography": "Damien Le Moal manages the System Software Group within WD Research. Damien has over 30 years of experience in the area of system software, operating systems and storage software solutions. Damien is involved in research activities including block device management and file systems. He is a regular contributor to the Linux kernel (file systems, block layer, SCSI, ATA and NVMe subsystems), is the maintainer of the kernel ATA subsystem and of the zonefs file system, and is the author and maintainer of several open-source projects.", "username": "" } ], "abstract": "Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) brings significant storage cost reduction for various workloads (e.g. Cloud, AI inference, backup, archive) by enabling more storage capacity and reliability. Adoption of SMR in production systems has accelerated in recent years, and over 65% of the Exabytes shipped in 2026 are forecast to be SMR. The Linux kernel supports SMR HDDs since version 4.10, released in 2017. After nearly ten years upstream, this support is now mature, with significant improvements compared to its early days. Several kernel file systems now natively supporting SMR, or zoned block devices in general.\r\n\r\nThis presentation starts with discussing the general characteristics of the kernel support for zoned block devices and the most recent kernel changes in this area to improve ease of use for end-users as well as for developers. Best practices for application development are discussed and illustrated with some performance results for workloads using a block device and using a file system, showing the viability of SMR compared to regular HDDs. Several features under consideration and development (prototyping phase) are also presented, including on-going work to support HDD data-preserving head depopulation and its integration within file systems.", "conf_url": "http://2026.fossy.ca/schedule/presentation/450/", "cancelled": false }, { "room": "", "rooms": [], "start": "2026-08-06T19:00:00", "end": "2026-08-06T22:00:00", "duration": 180, "kind": "Social Event", "section": "fossy-2026", "section_name": "FOSSY 2026", "track": null, "conf_key": 379, "license": "CC-BY-SA", "tags": "", "released": false, "contact": [], "name": "Official Thursday Night Event" } ] }