It’s all over until next year for Scale, the big, community oriented Linux festival for Southern California. Our man-on-the-scene filed the report before starting his long journey home.
While it may not be an age-old question — not exactly a query for all time, but still — it actually does merit asking: What happens when hardware puts software freedom first?
The Software Freedom Conservancy built a router to find out, and that’s the topic of Scale 22X’s Sunday keynote, given by Denver Gingerich.
For the past four days at Scale, the recently-released OpenWrt One wireless router has been put through the paces with almost flawless results. OpenWrt One was designed from the ground up by Software Freedom Conservancy and its member project, OpenWrt, to provide everything you need to modify and adapt the device — including, of course, its software – to ensure both the hardware and its software last as long as possible
Gingerich took attendees on a behind-the-scenes journey through the creation, manufacturing, and launch of the OpenWrt One, highlighting all the unique ways the One puts you first, while dealing with the joys and challenges of the modern hardware landscape along the way.
“When there are shifts in technology, there are shifts in power,” Gingerich said, explaining that from the printing press to computers, there were very big shifts over the last few hundred years. “When it comes to our (modern) technology, can you modify it or can you install over it, is the agency by which the power is determined.”
Gingerich explained the difference between ethical and non-ethical software for user interfaces on telephones and televisions, meaning closed source versus open source. He brought up the example of the Vizio television, “which spies on you,” according to Gingerich. “They look at all of your viewing data that is provided to the television manufacturer and they sell it on from there.
“What do we need? We need ethical technology,” he said. “And how do we get that? Well, because today’s technology is defined so much by software, the functionality is defined by what software is on the device, we need software freedom.”
Gingerich outlined how to achieve software freedom, the Software Freedom Conservancy is dedicated to initiating this.
The first, according to Gingerich, is building hardware, and the first iteration of this is the Open Wrt One router. And why did the Conservancy make the device?
“There are several reasons why it was necessary to build the Open Wrt One,“ he said, noting that TP-Link didn’t allow users to flash new software on its products until the Federal Communications Commission ruled that it must be allowed.
So there were issues that came up around support. Gingerich noted one example that when a router reached end of life, there was no longer any way to update the software.
The difference in time between lawsuits dragging on and making their own hardware was another consideration, Gingerich said, tongue-in-cheek.
So the Software Freedom Conservancy collaborated with the OpenWRT project to develop the router, as well as with Banana Pi to make it a reality.
“We had to fix a few things along the way, like some hardware fixes, and then released it on Black Friday and it sold out within a week.”
What did we fix? “We fixed everything,” Gingerich said. “The FCC said it was certified and we just had to build the router, and now we have proof.”
In addition there is no restrictions in downloading software to your router, meaning the Open Wrt One router is expected to have support for a very long time.
“We expect that the Wrt One router to have at least 10 years of support, if not 20 or 30 years. We think we should be measuring support in decades, not just a few years.”
Installfest Saturday Followed by Linux Training Sunday
What separates Scale from many of the conferences and expos around the world is that it is completely volunteer-run. For the last two decades, Scale has grown from ballrooms in hotels like the Westin and Hilton LAX to the Pasadena Convention Center.
Tom King, a long time volunteer at Scale, is the Training Coordinator for the event. Every year for the last decade, Scale hosts a two-day installfest and training session for new users who want to convert from whatever they’ve been using to Linux.
“It’s going really well this year,” King said. “We’ve had quite a few sign up this year, a number have come in for our installfest (on Saturday) and we’ve been pretty much successful. Some things are a challenge, but we like a challenge.”
Saturday’s session is basically an “installfest,” where the new users install Linux and gets a feel for the program, and Sunday “we are using for the training itself,” according to King.
King has been involved since Scale 3X but has been volunteering since Scale 6X in various capacities.
As for the training itself,Scale has been doing them for the last 10 years, and King said every year they bring in someone to do the training or someone does the training for us.
As is the case with Scale, they were looking for volunteers to coordinate the training session this year and King stepped up.
“This is really good training for folks who really want to start in on Linux, want to know what to do and how to use their system, and maybe they’ve got friends who want to do it but don’t know where to start. And that’s what we’re here to do: Get them that start.”
Another Trip to the Exhibit Floor
Meanwhile on the exhibit floor the mood is more subdued, but at the same time a little more intense. Discussions take on a more serious tone between exhibitor and attendee.
At the DBeaver booth, Zach Antunes has had a pretty good expo so far. With 10 million users, DBeaver is an open-source database user interface and credits the growth of his software to shows like Scale.
“My point there is that we’ve grown because the product is so easy to use,” Antunes said. “You can get set up in 30 seconds and at that point you can basically connect to any database you want – PostgreSQL, Oracle, whatever.”
DBeaver has both a free and a paid-subscription version of the software.
“We have a paid version more geared toward enterprise users, more focused on managing the access securely for their employees, and the open source product is great for probably 75 to 80 percent of the user cases,” according to Antunes.
The original founder of DBeaver came up with the binary for the product in 2010, “and we commercialized the product in 2018 or 2019, something like that,” he added.
While DBeaver has been to a few Scales so far, this is Antunes’ first expo, and the response at Scale 22X has been “really good.”
“We have a really dedicated community, and we’ve had tons of people stop by, and this is more of an open-source conference, so we always love to hear that folks love the open-source product.”
Scale by Numbers
Attendance this year, at least as of Sunday morning, was at about 3,000 attendees, according to conference Chair Ilan Rabinovitch. He credits the co-location events, like Ubucon and the PostgreSQL tracks, with the increase in attendees.
“The colo events are bringing new energy and ideas to Scale allowing for cross-pollination between communities and expertises that otherwise don’t usually interact,” Rabinovitch said.
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