FOSDEM 2023 Recap | Gene WorkSpace

After three years since the pandemic began, I haven't attended any major international conferences. This time, I decided to go to FOSDEM and help out as a volunteer, thinking it would be great to experience this large-scale open source event in person. OCF I decided to attend FOSDEM and help out as a volunteer, thinking it would be great to experience this large-scale open source event in person.

Table of Contents

FOSDEM Overview

FOSDEM stands for Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting, which literally means European Meeting of Free and Open Source Software Developers. Since its inception in 2000, it has built a long and storied history. The past two years (2021/2022) were held entirely online due to the pandemic, but this year (2023) it has returned to an in-person format.

This year, attending FOSDEM felt very similar to COSCUP, though the level of technical depth and diversity of topics was significantly greater than COSCUP. It truly brings together the entire European open source community.

FOSDEM Schedule

FOSDEM's session format is similar to COSCUP. Each Developer Room (shortened to 'dev room') usually features a main theme, and attendees can choose sessions based on their interests, spending a full day in one room or hopping between different dev rooms to explore various topics.

This year I mainly participated in the following dev rooms

Containers

Containers – this dev room is always packed, so sessions are streamed live. I attended many of the talks here, as it was the most popular session block at FOSDEM. 7 Years of cgroup v2: The Future of Linux Resource Control. The session, as the title suggests, focused mainly on cgroup v2. The speaker works at Meta and is one of the main contributors to cgroup v2, Chris Down. He explained how, during the pandemic, when team members couldn't travel or meet in person, they used cgroup v2 to gain better control over system resources across various services, improving efficiency, and even enhancing performance under certain conditions. The presentation also included many useful references and detailed comparisons, which I recommend watching later if you're interested.

All FOSDEM talks are recorded and streamed, so I strongly encourage everyone to watch them online.

Containers Room - Another Journey Cluster API: Operating Kubernetes with Kubernetes It's also a journey of discovery. Cluster API is a sub-project within Kubernetes, aiming to provide users with a declarative way to manage the entire lifecycle of a Kubernetes cluster. In short, it means using Kubernetes to manage other Kubernetes clusters. Due to recent plans to shift OpenStack Magnum towards using this specialized project for managing Kubernetes clusters, there will be a brief period of research into this project.

Kernel

Kernel Room - Not sure why half the journey has been overshadowed by eBPF-related topics, but it's clear that eBPF has recently become an extremely popular technology.

These three talks are all about eBPF programs with real-world use cases. meta netdevices mainly explains how they achieve near-host networking performance within Kubernetes Pods, and in doing so, they leverage eBPF-developed meta netdevices to replace veth for even higher performance.

Optimizing BPF hashmap and friends mainly compares the performance of various eBPF hash functions, while eBPF loader deep dive explains the overall structure of an eBPF program. Those interested in eBPF's underlying operations can definitely benefit from watching these two talks.

Software Defined Storage

SDS this dev room was great Dynamic load change in SDS systems This talk mainly explains how to achieve consistent read performance across all OSDs in a Ceph cluster by tuning the placement of primary OSDs. Since in large clusters, primary OSDs are distributed more evenly than average, this technique performs better in smaller clusters. This feature will be released in the next Ceph version (Reef), so users running small Ceph clusters can take a look to see how it works in practice.

Virtualization and IaaS

Virtualization and IaaS are not primarily about running code, but about talking to developers. The speaker, OpenInfra Foundation General Manager Thierry Carrez, explained this. Is OpenStack Still Needed in 2023?。

In fact, this topic still carries weight. Thierry used some data to demonstrate that OpenStack is still actively developing and evolving, yet most people still consider it a dead project. His explanation is that OpenStack has already become part of the foundational infrastructure. Most users don't even interact with the underlying infrastructure directly, but instead work with higher-level Kubernetes to orchestrate. That's why most people believe this project is no longer needed, but in reality, it's just that most people don't care anymore. I personally agree with this view—OpenStack still has its market, but it's no longer relevant to most. If this project is no longer needed, I no longer rely on OpenStack to sustain myself either.

The switch forwards the packet from compute node 1 to compute node 2

FOSDEM talks are often hard to attend in person, but every session still leaves a lasting impression. You can catch the energy and atmosphere through recordings, and also learn from speaker bios and interactions captured in photos. If you're still curious about any FOSDEM talks, you can check them out.Complete Schedule, and all recordings are posted onthis website

OpenInfra Gathering

After the first day ended, I attended the OpenInfra Gathering and had great conversations with many core contributors of OpenStack about the future development of OpenStack.

Sessions

FOSDEM and COSCUP both host numerous open source community events, but unlike Taiwan's conferences that organize large-scale activities and encourage attendees to visit various sessions, FOSDEM does not have such structured arrangements. Attendees are mostly people who are interested in or already involved in related open source fields.

Since I didn’t find the content particularly engaging, most of my time was spent wandering through the sessions.

Summary

If you’ve attended COSCUP in Taiwan, you’d likely find FOSDEM quite different. The overall atmosphere and content of both conferences are surprisingly similar. In fact, FOSDEM is also a common gathering place for many open source experts. If you’d like to meet other open source contributors, FOSDEM is definitely worth attending. Additionally, compared to Asia, FOSDEM has a much higher level of technical depth and discussion quality, making it highly recommended for friends who have a strong interest in these topics.