-------------------------------------------- FOSDEM - day 2 2018.02.07 21:08:03 CET -------------------------------------------- Last Sunday was the second day of FOSDEM, but I only got down to typing this post today. I participated in the key signing party and spent my hours after the conference automating the job of signing, exporting and mailing keys. After four hours I had an MVP, but found out about Pius [1] which already had less bugs and more features than mine, so I decided to use it. Besides the key party, I spent most of the day in the Decentralized Internet and Privacy devroom. I had to arrive early to find a seat, about 1 hour before the first talk. Unfortunately I felt the devroom could have been better organized, or maybe it's because it became clear to me a Panel would have been the best thing to start the day. A Panel about terminology and goal. The term "decentralized" was used throughout the day, but with very different meanings. These are some of the meanings used: 1. Network centric: more smaller AS'es, exchanging traffic in IXP's. 2. Federated: exchange of information between distinct systems. 3. Anti-trust: some companies are becoming too big and host too much information. 4. Anti-capitalist: against any type of private enterprise. 5. Anarchist: against any type of hierarchical organization. Unless the audience was paying attention, it was easy to become confused as speakers did not state their definitions explicitly and there were only a few moments when questions from the audience made it clear there was a problem. There was plenty of the usual propaganda, for example open-source and free-software are not the same thing, but this is FOSDEM so I just ignored it. I was not impressed, but hope it will be better next year. I am willing to help, but my opinion seems to go against what many of the track organizers believe, so I'm not sure I'll be welcome. [1] https://www.phildev.net/pius/