Tonnerre Lombard

On July 9th to 11th, the Chaos Singularity (CoSin) is taking place for the 5th time.

The Chaos Singularity is an event with presentations, workshops, discussions and information about technology, internet politics and geek culture. It is organized annually by the Chaos Computer Club Zurich (CCCZH) and Chaostreff Basel.

You’re invited to submit talks and workshops for CoSin until June 30 through CCC’s Pentabarf system.

As always, the CoSin is taking place at the Kulturzentrum Bremgarten (KuZeB), Zürcher-/Zugerstrasse, 5620 Bremgarten, Switzerland. Everybody with an interest in technology is invited to join. For more information please refer to the CoSin Call for Papers.

On May 7th of 2009, a new OSS Jam is going to take place at the Google Zurich office. While this seems like nothing unusual as OSS Jams tend to take place about once per month, it is slightly special for me, as I’m going to give a small lecture there.

Monitoring Systems lecture

The topic is going to be monitoring systems, as the most popular monitoring system Nagios recently added a PHP dependency for its web interface. Since a monitoring server is supposed to be a hardened setup as it needs to work reliably rather than sending out SPAM into the wide world, this means that for everyone at least half a bit into security related matters, Nagios just turned into a no-go.

The Hobbit Monitor provides a nice alternative to Nagios, but while its notification system is way more configurable, its plain text checks are easy to define and while it performs a great lot better than Nagios, unfortunately it lacks some features which might be necessary for larger setups. Also, better performance doesn’t mean good performance — with a few thousand hosts, the Hobbit Monitor also puts a rather large load on the monitoring server.

Finally, as always, the conclusion tends towards a Kästnerian «Do it yourself». Thus, I’m introducing a new monitoring system I’m going to develop in the closer future, entirely in C with a nice templating system, and decent performance.

Binary patches

As I’m currently implementing a binary patch management system for the NetBSD Foundation, I’m also going to talk a bit about requirements of binary patch systems and how my system meets them. Since I only have a working prototype with basic functionality so far, people are also welcome to join this effort.

After the success of the first OSS jam, Google invites people to a second round in its new Zurich office on February 28th, 2008. Once again, participants are invited to present their projects in a short 5-minute time frame, trying to find future project contributers.

This time, a topic has been set for submissions: «The desktop in the past, present and future». People who are seeking for participation in their desktop projects are invited to present them at the jam.

OSS Jam and Google

The question is of course how this fits into Google’s search engine business. To this question, there are two different, unrelated answers.

Firstly, Google has extended its scope beyond search engines quite some time ago. Like Yahoo delivered widgets for web applications, Google also delivered the Google Widget Toolkit for Java web applications and similar products, and is expanding its scope to Open Source and the community.

Secondly, Google’s OSS Jam provides the Open Source community with ways to find new participants for their projects, and as such, there is a philosophical relation to the search business.

Either way, it is going to be interesting to watch the future development of this tradition.

For more information please visit Google’s Open Source Jam information site. 

The web service platform provider Google invited to an Open Source Software lecture event called Open Source Jam in Zurich. On that event, participants are invited to present their projects in 5 minutes, trying to find other programmers who are willing to participate in it.

The event is also supposed to feature a “hack center” where participants can code together and socialize. And as the main feature, pizza and beer are provided. The date is not fixed yet though, and participants are invited to subscribe to a common organization mailing list.

The nomenclature debate

It is also to be noted that the event has been announced as an Open Source Event, which has already caused Free Software propagators to abstain from participation in an event. It is clear that the event is unluckily announced already, and it is going to be interesting how it is going to be accepted in the Free Software camp.

I would like to invite all people who have an interest in political activism for the benefits of Open Source and Free Software as well as aiming at a free and open information infrastructure (open standards, etc.) to the second Swiss FOSS compatible lobbyist meeting in Berne, in the conference room in the railway station. The meeting will take place on

Monday, November 5th, 2007 18:00 (that is 6pm)

in the conference rooms inside the railway station of Bern, Switzerland.

The place is easily reached by taking the train to Berne and leaving at the central station. If you are planning to go there by car, there is a parking lot (surveilled) right above the railway station (Universität Langgasse).

If you have comments or don’t know how to find this place, call me under TL1733-RIPE or +41.793790549.

Agenda

1. Salutation
2. Review of the situation since the first meeting
3. Analysis of failed projects
4. Introduction of working groups and creating member lists (see next headline)
5. Working group agenda discussion
6. Outlook on likely items for the year 2008
7. Maybe drop by at the Altes Tramdepot or something similar to have a drink

Proposed woking groups

The following is a list of working groups which are deemed helpful for the organization of the upcoming campaigns:

Currently debated items

• Office OpenXML standardization
• Copyright Revision (cleanup work)
• Federal Surveillance (trojan etc.)

Generic Working Groups

• Open Standards
• Amendments
• Lobbying
• Intelligence
• Press
• IT (Yes, there are lots of things to do in this area too)