Attended FOSDEM 2012

FOSDEM 2012

This was my first time at FOSDEM (thanks to Igalia for the sponsoring) and I was really impressed by the lots of tracks that you can find there, but as there are so many, you realize that there are many you are not interested at. The feeling is only a bit more intense than at GUADEC or Desktop Summit, because for your interestest, you target more or less the same kind of talks, but in this case, offer is a bit broader.

My thoughts:

  • WebKit and WebKitGtk are in a good shape.
  • We are going to more web based desktops.
  • Tizen is taking off and it is betting for HTML5 and ELF, which looks like a toolkit with very interesting features like Edje being able to write an app with different views for different platforms in an easy way (at least in the paper, because I couldn’t try it).
  • GStreamer is in the right way to 1.0 by improving APIs and features that can boost performance in embedded.
  • I would like to have gone to Wayland talks, but I could not.
  • CERN really rocks working with FLOSS, specially on drivers and even developing their own hardware for their needs. It seems they have the policy of writing and using FLOSS because of being a publicly funded organization. Many other could follow their advice.

About tourist stuff, it was really a pity to be taking some medicins that prevented me to drink the famous Belgian beer, but at least I could visit some famous stuff in Brussels, like the Atomium, Manneken Pis and the Grote Markt. What medicins did allow me was trying the famous waffles and some good chocolate made by Frederic Blondeel.