![](\"./images/fosdem-schedule.png\")
I attended the Free and Open source Software\nDevelopers’ European Meeting (FOSDEM) in Brussels, Belgium last weekend.\nThere are hundreds of hours of talks in 35 rooms over a period of two\ndays, and rooms are often full to capacity, so it’s impossible to see\neverything! Thankfully every room is live-streamed and recordings made\navailable after the fact, so you can catch up on anything you\nmiss.
\n
On the Eurostar over my travelling companion\nand I were lamenting about the Nix DSL, and we heard a French accent\nfrom behind:
\n\n\nAh, NixOS. See you at FOSDEM\nthen!
\n
The day started with a coffee and a banana\n(probably not substantial enough in hindsight), an absolutely packed\nnumber 71 bus to the ULB Solbosch Campus, and arriving in plenty of time\nto get a seat for the 09:30 CET opening ceremony. I kicked off the day\nby attending:
\nHaving, during my January tradition, spent\nsome time revisiting my technical (in addition to non-technical) habits,\nafter getting sufficiently frustrated with thunderbird I’ve started\nusing the aerc mail client along\nwith isync\n(mbsync)/goimapnotify/mu. So naturally I then moseyed on over to the\nModern Email BoF.
\nI was a little early and caught the end of\nthe NGI Zero network meetup, and met someone who works for the Dutch\nStandardisation Forum on, amoung other things, a neat website and\nmailserver tester at internet.nl. My\nwebsite and mailserver had a couple of flagged issues including a DMARC\npolicy of none (which should really quarantine or reject once it’s\nworking properly), and DNSSEC support due my nameserver EON not (yet)\nsupporting DNSSEC. Switching to bind with a couple of configuration\nchanges got me scoring 100% on my apex freumh.org. The\nwww subdomain was a CNAME to the apex, which meant it also\nserved an MX record. I don’t serve any significant website on my apex\ndomain, so I simply dropped the subdomain. Now I’m told a free\ninternet.nl T-Shirt is on its way to my Cambridge\naddress!
I’ve been working on a nameserver\nto provision TLS certificates recently for inclusion into my\none-stop-shop self-hosting solution Eilean. By including\nthe DNS zonefile data in the Nix configuration we can automatically\nprovision the necessary records for new services, as well as manage\nrecords for e.g. DKIM/DMARC/SPIF. It would be great if I could get a\nscore of 100% on internet.nl on an out-of-the box Eilean\ndeployment as this would simplify the experience of self-hosting these\nservices greatly.
When the Email discussion\nstarted I sat next to a person who develops the Go IMAP library used by\nmy mail client aerc. They also just so happen to be the lead maintainer\nof wlroots,\na library which I was writing bindings to OCaml on the train over in\nhopes of writing a performant, functional, modern display server. I’ve since\nbeen added as a maintainer to the dormant bindings\nlibrary.
I then joined he JMAP\ndiscussion section and got some insight to the chicken-and-egg problem\nof Internet protocol ossification in a discussion between Dovecot\ndevelopers and salespeople, and JMAP proponents. Talking to one such\nJMAP proponent developing a JMAP client for\nAndroid was very educational. It seems like JMAP is essentially an\nopen standard for implementing a lot of functionality that comes from\npropriety client/server solutions like Gmail. For example, it supports\nthe use of notification services of instead of polling (and not just\nmaintaining an open TCP connection). I’ve heard this can be an issue\nusing non-Google android distributions like GraphineOS, but apparently there are\nnumerous alternatives such as microG.\nAnother example is that it supports search on server functionality\nwithout having to download emails. I like to keep all my mail locally on\nmy main machine, but the JMAP seems particularly well suited to mobile\ndevices where that is not the case.
\nThey also mentioned the Stallwart JMAP-compatible mailserver. This\nwas mentioned by nlnet.nl in the NixOS\ndevroom on Sunday as well. I might try deploying it for myself and\nintegrating it into Eilean.
\nAfter the Modern Email devroom I had a\nlook around the stands in\nthe AW building which were mainly OS related. A couple of really cool\nprojects were PostmarketOS and SailfishOS building Linux (not Android)\ndistributions for mobile devices, though apparently SailfishOS has some\nclosed-source components such as for Android emulation. It seems Gnome\nand KDE both have mobile display environments, and Phosh is the on\nPostmarketOS. Sxmo is cool project that\nencourages allows the use of e.g. sway. It also allows SSHing to your\nphone and sending SMS messages! I can’t figure out how to send texts\nfrom the command line with KDE, It also looks to be possible to deploy\na number of matrix\nbridges for this.
\nMy choice of browser was vindicated with a\nfree ‘cookie’ stand:
\n![](\"./images/fosdem-cookies.jpg\")
I attended a bunch more talks after\nlunch (but still far less than I wanted too):
\nAfter the conference proper we\nwere in want of something to do so we went to a Tailscale meetup for\nfree drinks. To collect said drinks, one had to connect to a printer shared via\nTailscale. Unfortunately as I’m using a self-hosted headscale\ncontrol server I wasn’t able to have this machine shared with me.\nThankfully my companions were more than happy to print a ticket on my\nbehalf. Though, this reminded that my idea of a ‘federated tailscale’\nwould be really cool. In the bar I met some lovely people and got some\npodcast recommendations (e.g. Self\nHosted).
\nAfter another coffee breakfast, I headed to the\nULB for the final day of conferencing. I mainly camped out in two rooms\n– the Nix and NixOS devroom and the Matrix devroom.
\nIn this devroom I\nattended:
\nfstab entry\nfor an invalid ZFS pool, which required asking a family member to be my\nremote KVM to boot an old generation for me to fix the entry.During an intermission, I was hacking\non my VPS deploying DNSSEC with BIND9 for a free\ninternet.nl T-Shirt when I started to experience some\nstrange network issues. All requests to freumh.org were\nbeing directed to\nhttp://135.181.100.27:6080/php/urlblock.php?args=<hash>&url=http://135.181.100.27%2f\non eduroam. I wasn’t able to connect to my site on the IPv6-only\nfosdem network either, despite it working the previous day.\nSwitching the dual-stack IPv4 compatible network seemed to alleviate the\nissues, but before I uncovered these underlying network issues this\nmanifested itself in my being unable to connect to my headscale\nTailscale control server, which I exclaimed to my friend next to me.\nThen the lead\ndeveloper for headscale, sitting right behind me, piped up\nand said something along the lines of “I know it’s rude to look at other\npeople’s screens but if headscale is causing you any issues I\napologise”.
The talks continued with:
\nHaving self-hosted a Matrix homeserver for\n(checks logs) 2 years this February, I was keen to attend the\nMatrix devroom, where I learnt about:
\nAll in all, attending FOSDEM was a great\nexperience where I learnt a bunch about topics I’m passionate about and\nmet some really cool people.
", "content": "I attended the Free and Open source Software\nDevelopers’ European Meeting (FOSDEM) in Brussels, Belgium last weekend.\nThere are hundreds of hours of talks in 35 rooms over a period of two\ndays, and rooms are often full to capacity, so it’s impossible to see\neverything! Thankfully every room is live-streamed and recordings made\navailable after the fact, so you can catch up on anything you\nmiss.
\n
On the Eurostar over my travelling companion\nand I were lamenting about the Nix DSL, and we heard a French accent\nfrom behind:
\n\n\nAh, NixOS. See you at FOSDEM\nthen!
\n
The day started with a coffee and a banana\n(probably not substantial enough in hindsight), an absolutely packed\nnumber 71 bus to the ULB Solbosch Campus, and arriving in plenty of time\nto get a seat for the 09:30 CET opening ceremony. I kicked off the day\nby attending:
\nHaving, during my January tradition, spent\nsome time revisiting my technical (in addition to non-technical) habits,\nafter getting sufficiently frustrated with thunderbird I’ve started\nusing the aerc mail client along\nwith isync\n(mbsync)/goimapnotify/mu. So naturally I then moseyed on over to the\nModern Email BoF.
\nI was a little early and caught the end of\nthe NGI Zero network meetup, and met someone who works for the Dutch\nStandardisation Forum on, amoung other things, a neat website and\nmailserver tester at internet.nl. My\nwebsite and mailserver had a couple of flagged issues including a DMARC\npolicy of none (which should really quarantine or reject once it’s\nworking properly), and DNSSEC support due my nameserver EON not (yet)\nsupporting DNSSEC. Switching to bind with a couple of configuration\nchanges got me scoring 100% on my apex freumh.org. The\nwww subdomain was a CNAME to the apex, which meant it also\nserved an MX record. I don’t serve any significant website on my apex\ndomain, so I simply dropped the subdomain. Now I’m told a free\ninternet.nl T-Shirt is on its way to my Cambridge\naddress!
I’ve been working on a nameserver\nto provision TLS certificates recently for inclusion into my\none-stop-shop self-hosting solution Eilean. By including\nthe DNS zonefile data in the Nix configuration we can automatically\nprovision the necessary records for new services, as well as manage\nrecords for e.g. DKIM/DMARC/SPIF. It would be great if I could get a\nscore of 100% on internet.nl on an out-of-the box Eilean\ndeployment as this would simplify the experience of self-hosting these\nservices greatly.
When the Email discussion\nstarted I sat next to a person who develops the Go IMAP library used by\nmy mail client aerc. They also just so happen to be the lead maintainer\nof wlroots,\na library which I was writing bindings to OCaml on the train over in\nhopes of writing a performant, functional, modern display server. I’ve since\nbeen added as a maintainer to the dormant bindings\nlibrary.
I then joined he JMAP\ndiscussion section and got some insight to the chicken-and-egg problem\nof Internet protocol ossification in a discussion between Dovecot\ndevelopers and salespeople, and JMAP proponents. Talking to one such\nJMAP proponent developing a JMAP client for\nAndroid was very educational. It seems like JMAP is essentially an\nopen standard for implementing a lot of functionality that comes from\npropriety client/server solutions like Gmail. For example, it supports\nthe use of notification services of instead of polling (and not just\nmaintaining an open TCP connection). I’ve heard this can be an issue\nusing non-Google android distributions like GraphineOS, but apparently there are\nnumerous alternatives such as microG.\nAnother example is that it supports search on server functionality\nwithout having to download emails. I like to keep all my mail locally on\nmy main machine, but the JMAP seems particularly well suited to mobile\ndevices where that is not the case.
\nThey also mentioned the Stallwart JMAP-compatible mailserver. This\nwas mentioned by nlnet.nl in the NixOS\ndevroom on Sunday as well. I might try deploying it for myself and\nintegrating it into Eilean.
\nAfter the Modern Email devroom I had a\nlook around the stands in\nthe AW building which were mainly OS related. A couple of really cool\nprojects were PostmarketOS and SailfishOS building Linux (not Android)\ndistributions for mobile devices, though apparently SailfishOS has some\nclosed-source components such as for Android emulation. It seems Gnome\nand KDE both have mobile display environments, and Phosh is the on\nPostmarketOS. Sxmo is cool project that\nencourages allows the use of e.g. sway. It also allows SSHing to your\nphone and sending SMS messages! I can’t figure out how to send texts\nfrom the command line with KDE, It also looks to be possible to deploy\na number of matrix\nbridges for this.
\nMy choice of browser was vindicated with a\nfree ‘cookie’ stand:
\n
I attended a bunch more talks after\nlunch (but still far less than I wanted too):
\nAfter the conference proper we\nwere in want of something to do so we went to a Tailscale meetup for\nfree drinks. To collect said drinks, one had to connect to a printer shared via\nTailscale. Unfortunately as I’m using a self-hosted headscale\ncontrol server I wasn’t able to have this machine shared with me.\nThankfully my companions were more than happy to print a ticket on my\nbehalf. Though, this reminded that my idea of a ‘federated tailscale’\nwould be really cool. In the bar I met some lovely people and got some\npodcast recommendations (e.g. Self\nHosted).
\nAfter another coffee breakfast, I headed to the\nULB for the final day of conferencing. I mainly camped out in two rooms\n– the Nix and NixOS devroom and the Matrix devroom.
\nIn this devroom I\nattended:
\nfstab entry\nfor an invalid ZFS pool, which required asking a family member to be my\nremote KVM to boot an old generation for me to fix the entry.During an intermission, I was hacking\non my VPS deploying DNSSEC with BIND9 for a free\ninternet.nl T-Shirt when I started to experience some\nstrange network issues. All requests to freumh.org were\nbeing directed to\nhttp://135.181.100.27:6080/php/urlblock.php?args=<hash>&url=http://135.181.100.27%2f\non eduroam. I wasn’t able to connect to my site on the IPv6-only\nfosdem network either, despite it working the previous day.\nSwitching the dual-stack IPv4 compatible network seemed to alleviate the\nissues, but before I uncovered these underlying network issues this\nmanifested itself in my being unable to connect to my headscale\nTailscale control server, which I exclaimed to my friend next to me.\nThen the lead\ndeveloper for headscale, sitting right behind me, piped up\nand said something along the lines of “I know it’s rude to look at other\npeople’s screens but if headscale is causing you any issues I\napologise”.
The talks continued with:
\nHaving self-hosted a Matrix homeserver for\n(checks logs) 2 years this February, I was keen to attend the\nMatrix devroom, where I learnt about:
\nAll in all, attending FOSDEM was a great\nexperience where I learnt a bunch about topics I’m passionate about and\nmet some really cool people.
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