LibrePlanet: Conference/2024/BOF

Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions for LP2024

Interested in putting together a BoF? Other plans or ideas for a social event? This is your place to do all that and more!

Birds of a Feather sessions are a time for people to get together around a specific topic or identity, either to focus on conversations, come up with new ideas, or just spend time socializing.

Use the following information to describe your BoF. Anyone can sign up to the event by adding their name to the attendee's list. We encourage you to try by yourself to add your session below, but if you run into any trouble feel free to email campaigns@fsf.org and we'll post it on the site and help direct people to your event! In addition, we recommend that you promote your event on the | libreplanet-discuss mailing list.

Template

Title

Theme/Topic

Organizer(s)

Description

Notes

Attendees

Location TBC

2024 Proposals

Free Software in Public Services & Daily Life

Theme/Topic: How can we have free software in public services and achieve a more libre life with free software.

Organizer(s): William Goodspeed

Attendees: Open to everyone

Description: It’s true that we may not achieve a fully libre life unless the government advocates free software. Since free software in some public services is already in practice, we are going to discuss the possibilities of free software in China’s public services, as well as copyright and licensing issues involved. Next, we will discuss how can we achieve a more libre life and share experiences and obstacles on using free software in China.

Notes: Aside from the conversations, you can also enjoy the natural scenery of the AAAA Grand Canal Park. This session will be held in the campsite of the park and a canopy will also be available. So don’t forget to bring your own foods and drinks.

Location Update: Grand Canal Forest Park, Tongzhou, Beijing 39°51′59.47″N, 116°44′17.85″E Also, #bofbj@irc.oftc.net before starting.

Time: May 3, 9:30-18:00 UTC+8

Thursday Night Dinner (Filled Up)

Description: Following a tradition starting back in 2010, Jason Self is organizing his usual unofficial, pre-conference dinner for those that are in town on the Thursday night before LibrePlanet kicks off.

NOTE: While this is an unofficial conference dinner, I as the dinner organizer still apply the same policies as the conference itself during this event, including the the COVID-19 and Safe Space Policies, which can be found here: https://libreplanet.org/2024/safe-space-policy/ and https://libreplanet.org/2024/covid-19-policy/.

How to attend: UPDATE: The dinner has reached capacity. Everyone that has a confirmed email will have a seat.

Free Software Fun

Theme/Topic Free software games

Organizer(s) Zachary Sarver

Description Let's play and discuss some free software games together! The world of free software has plenty of fun on offer and interesting topics to discuss. We can discuss the topic of originality (or, what are the best games that aren't clones?), how to push free software forward, and the numerous free software engine reimplementations. Bring your favorite device, and maybe we can get in a few games of glDoom or Wesnoth.

Notes

Attendees

Daniel Krol (depending on when the event will be)

Zachary Liebl (depending on when the event is, ideally Friday)

Location TBC

AI and how to think about it

Theme/Topic: How do we decide how to judge AI in terms of software freedom?

Organizer(s): Ciarán O'Riordanaction

Description: For people to be treated well in a society which includes software, there are four essential freedoms that software must come with. But an AI system is different to a software system in that the source code is only a tiny part of the system. If we simply check the software part for the four freedoms, we might conclude that an AI system comes with the essential freedoms, but we would not get the benefits that we expect from society having the four freedoms. A second option would be that we apply the four freedoms test to the entire AI system (software + data). Most AI systems today would fail that test, the same way most software systems failed the four freedoms text back in the 1980s. Writing free software to replace non-free software was a huge task, but it was possible, and we have made a lot of progress on this. However, replacing non-free AI training data with free AI training data may be so difficult that it's impossible. One example is large language models. Data scraped from a million websites by professional writers might currently be the input for a medium-quality large language model. There's no way we can create a parallel internet with a similar corpus of a million websites by professional writers. A second example is medical systems. If the necessary training data includes personal or sensitive data, we might find it is impossible to accumulate a sufficient amount of freely-distributable, freely-modifiable medical data. (In both cases, creating an AI system would be possible, either using public domain texts from 100 years ago or using a limited archive of old or theoretical medical data, but neither would suffice to produce a medium-quality AI system for either task.)

Notes: So, anyone who agrees that the above issue is a problem, let's meet up and discuss it. (If you think the above is not an issue, maybe that can be discussed in a BoF about whether AI exists or whether AI systems are different to software systems. Those are great questions and I'd probably join those BoFs if someone proposes such.)

Attendees:

Location TBC

Sunday Night Meetup with Boston Open Dev

Theme/Topic: Casual hang out with open source enthusiasts at a bar

Organizer(s): Philip Durbin, Daniel Krol

Description: A group of open source enthusiasts have been meeting monthly at a bar in Brookline on Sunday nights since December 2022. We are timing our May meetup to encourage LibrePlanet attendees to join in. After the closing remarks on Sunday, May 5th, please feel free to head over to Hamilton Restaurant & Bar at 7pm.

Notes: This event is also listed on our website at https://bostonopen.dev and on Mastodon at https://floss.social/@bostonopen

Attendees:

Time: Sunday, May 5th at 7pm

Location: Hamilton Restaurant & Bar (back room, probably), 1366 Beacon Street, Brookline, MA 02446 (Google Maps)

GNU Boot Install Party

Theme/Topic

Organizer(s) The current GNU Boot maintainers (Adrien 'neox' Bourmault and Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli)

Description Would you like to free your computer? Come to the <a href="https://libreplanet.org/wiki/User:GNUtoo/GNU_Boot_Install_Party">GNU Boot Install party</a> and install GNU Boot, a free software BIOS/UEFI replacement, on your computer. Volunteers will be available to help you with the installation and the GNU Boot maintainers will be available remotely for questions and feedback. We will support the following computers: ThinkPad X200, ThinkPad X60, ThinkPad X60s, ThinkPad X60t, ThinkPad T60 with an Intel GPU. Note that GNU Boot is still experimental. As GNU Boot is oftentimes difficult to flash and only compatible with an extremely select range of motherboards, please note that we cannot be responsible for any potential hardware malfunctions that may occur during the install party. You can help to improve GNU Boot by installing it. More information: User:GNUtoo/GNU_Boot_Install_Party

Attendees

Jason Self - I have a ThinkPad X200 running an old version of libreboot from 2016 I think it is. Also, if anyone's interested in attempting it, I have a Dell Latitude E6400 with the original BIOS. I previously tried to install using the instructions but now it it just flashes the power light and nothing happens.

Zachary Liebl - I have A T500, so IDK if GNU Boot has a build for it yet. I have already flashed it with Libreboot so I have gone through the steps before. If it can't be flashed then I will just watch.

Alex Oliva - My x200 is running LibreBoot, but my old flasher broke and I still haven't managed to make the new one work for some reason. I've been stuck for a while, with a pile of machines to flash back home, and no flasher. I brought the flasher in the hope someone will help me figure out whether it's broken or I'm misusing it or something. Thanks!

Time: Saturday, May 4, and Sunday, May 5, 09:30-13:00 EDT

Location Wentworth Institute of Technology, room Beatty 419

Easy self-hosted web apps with Sandstorm (Lunch chat)

Theme/Topic Growing the community around the Sandstorm web application platform

Organizer Daniel Krol

Description

Web applications are an important topic in Free Software and user autonomy. Installing and administering them is still difficult for most users, and a hassle for everyone. This makes us rely more on Big Tech.

Sandstorm (yes, it's still alive!) is a project aiming to fix that. It has an application model that's secure by default. Applications are installed and upgraded via point-and-click. Users can easily back up data, or share it with limited permissions. And this all comes out of the box! Application developers can focus on what their application does.

Sandstorm started as a business over ten years ago, and it's now been handed off to the community. We're now trying to grow that community to make the project sustainable.

You may be interested to join us if:

• You're an old (or new) fan of Sandstorm!
• You're looking for replacements for Big Tech
• You'd like to develop web apps for yourself or your business

Notes

Follow us on Mastodon for updates

Check out the Sandstorm's Website

Attendees

Time Sunday 13:00-14:00 (during lunch break)

Location We'll grab lunch at Milkweed, about 10 minutes away. We'll try to walk there together, just keep an eye on our Mastodon. Otherwise, look for Dan in the purple hat!

General Friday Meetup

Theme/Topic General Socialization on Friday

Organizer Zachary Liebl

Description

This BoF is very informal. We can talk about Free Software and hang out. Really this is just for people that are waiting around in Boston on Friday for the conference to start. Maybe we can head to the Friday Night Open Office at the FSF together.

If you want to attend, email me at bof@zachliebl.com and/or put your name under the "Attendees" section below. If you want privacy then my PGP fingerprint is 1959F20BFD074B113D5E6CA6EEECE2EA2CE8B252.

Start time of 2 PM on May 3. Again this is very informal so you can message me if you want to meet earlier or later.

I am not currently on the libreplanet-discuss mailing list so if someone posted this there that would be great.

Attendees

Location

I will be around Northeastern University's campus (which is next to Wentworth). So I was thinking of meeting in Curry Student Center. But if you have a better idea of where to meet then message me.

This page was a featured resource in December 2023.