FOSSY 2023, Portland: Free and Open Source Software Yearly conference | Hacker News Reader

FOSSY 2023, Portland: Free and Open Source Software Yearly conference

2023.fossy.us

54 pointsedward58 comments

I attended a conference in Portland in 2022. The conference itself was fine, but Portland was a wreck. There were homeless encampments all over the place, open fires right on the sidewalks, needles and trash all over the place, boarded up buildings right in the middle of downtown. It was just bizarre and I felt pretty uncomfortable unless I was walking with other people.

I don't see why anyone would choose Portland as a conference location now. The city is in really bad shape, it's just not the same place it was even just a few years ago.

I live here. Do not leave anything in your vehicle or it will be broken into! The springtime brings so much theft and crime from what I’ve personally seen. If you go downtown ~50% of blocks have evidence of recent break-ins. It happened to me a few weeks ago right when the weather was getting warmer, a very apparent rise in crime this season.

When I was there someone pointed out to me that people leave their car windows rolled down when they park downtown to avoid smash and grabs.

Based on what a few people have told me, I'm mildly regretting booking a few days in Portland prior to spending a week out by Mt. Hood. I initially wrote it off as people not familiar with the realities of the downtown areas of a lot of West Coast cities. But it sounds as if Portland may be worse than others.

I went to Portland in 2019 and 2022. The difference was striking. Yeah there were homeless people in 2019 (PNW has kind of always had more homeless people that other parts of the country), but its more than that. It's just total dysfunction from what I saw. Businesses closing, antisocial behavior happening in the open, crimes happening and the police not taking any action. Overall the vibe just seemed pretty depressing.

Where are you staying? There are some parts of the core downtown (Old Town) that you might want to avoid, but the rest of Portland is not what the media portrays. Hell, even my family in the burbs (Beaverton, Cornelius) think it’s some crazy wasteland and constantly ask us if we feel safe and I have to laugh at them every time.

Go for a walk, rent a bike, and check out the amazing restaurant and brewery scene!

Downtown (10th Ave.) though I'm not locked in. I'm reasonably familiar with Portland though I've mostly (always?) stayed near the Convention Center for the dearly departed OSCON. I'm sure it will be fine. Probably go the West Hills, the Pearl, maybe a Willamette Valley wine tour one day.

I live in Portland. My advice for you would be to avoid staying (or even visiting if possible) in downtown and Old Town. The Pearl is not too safe either, although things are starting to look up. However, there are plenty of neighborhoods that are thriving. The Nob Hill neighborhood in Northwest Portland, Clinton/Division in Southeast Portland for example are alive and buzzing. Try staying there and explore these neighborhoods. I guarantee you'll have a wonderful time.

Seattle definitely has problems, but there are narrow areas where the homeless and tourist populations overlap, and if you’re lucky you won’t see the worst of it.

Except for Pioneer Square, you may be closer to these areas at your hotel than going to the sights.

They just finally passed a ban on camping in the streets. I think given proper enforcement we may finally see some of this start to get better

It’s changed a good bit since last year. Since your talking about boarded up buildings I assume you were near Pioneer Square? They’ve taken that down (including the crazy dystopian metal grate around the Apple Store).

This conference is also east side at the convention center, I highly recommend checking out all the awesome restaurants on Williams and Broadway (Eater has lists for both).

Despite some validity to what you are saying, it has always been the case that the convention center is unusually crappy in terms of food options. It's surprising given where it is. So many other areas have better and more awesome options. I would never suggest the convention center area as the region to go to if wanting to explore great restaurants.

Same. I went to Portland in 2022 for Railsconf. Me and my wife both went thinking to visit the city a bit before/after the conference. It was awful. Downtown was mostly boarded up and did not feel safe at all. Chicago, Philly, Baltimore, Detroit, any of these "violent" cities unironically feel safer and I would rather be in that portland.

I tried to make the most of it and look past this stuff, but after I went home and reflected on it I realized no, this isnt normal, this wasn't good, and I looking over my shoulder the whole time to make sure nobody was following me isn't something I've done in any other city.

I submitted a talk to the wild card track and it was accepted. It's a session I've done at a few other conferences. The title is "Tools for linking Wikidata and OpenStreetMap".

I'm happy to see this. OSCON was such an amazing conference, and FOSCON was such a lovely complement to it. I recall seeing DHH, Matz and _why all in the same room at free geek. I really hope this recaptures the ethos of open source in a way that feels like it has been somewhat lost.

What is meant by "the first"?

FOSDEM has been around for more than 20 years:

https://fosdem.org/2023/about/

FOSDEM 2023 happened in February. The recorded talks and slides are available:

https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/events/

Previous years recorded talks and slides are also available:

https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/events/

https://archive.fosdem.org/2021/schedule/events/

Nevertheless, it is good to have more FOSS conferences.

Since FOSDEM usually happens in Europe, having a conference in North America is good.

Best of luck to FOSSY. I hope they post recorded videos and slides of the talks so that those who cannot attend in person can also participate.

the first instance of this conference, which they intend to run yearly.

Ah. That makes sense.

Maybe it would be more clear as:

"The first annual Free and Open Source Software Yearly conference"

Instead of:

"The first Free and Open Source Software Yearly conference"

Putting "annual" in the title makes that meaning / context more clear to me.

As if fosdem isn't annual. It would possibly confuse me more tbh.

"The first instance of" or so might be more clear but, yeah, the catchiness degrades with every attempt at making it clearer. One might even be lead to think that "Free and Open Source Software Yearly" is not an amazingly unambiguous name to use in a world with fosdem, t-dose, and probably others.

The word "Yearly" is already in the title. Adding "annual" seems redundant.

sounds like post-hoc justification to me, you could have been confused other way

But here's a real solution (though I don't think it was a problem needing to be solved):

"FOSSY: the Free and Open Source Software Yearly conference, year 1"

>> the first instance of this conference, which they intend to run yearly.

Yeah but the F is FOSSY stands for First. Either they change the name next year or it doesn't make sense.

As someone mentioned Fossdem, the is also the LibreGraphics thing, and perhaps some other smaller ones.

The name is IMHO a very poor choice. My suspicion is they actually thought this would be a first of its kind, but that would mean they are not the right people to do this.

> Yeah but the F is FOSSY stands for First

It clearly stands for "Free", where do you get that idea?

Hahha, yes! That was really stupid on my part:

>>The first Free and Open Source Software Yearly conference

Sure the word "first" is in there but it doesn't even have the capital F like Free....

Bows head in shame....

I've had a similar joke whenever I try to describe patent trolls, about how normally standards-essential patents are expected to be widely accessible, and the terms that satisfy these expectations are typically described as FRAND -- Fair, Reasonable, AND.

(...Non-Discriminatory)

Post recorded videos are good.

Live streams are better. If I decide to attend a conference remotely I tell it at work and just spend the 2 x 8 hours it takes to watch the streams. Have done it for FOSDEM several times and in recent years technical problems with the streams have been exceptional.

If I plan to look at recordings, it somehow mostly never happens. It's easy to postpone. I would not tell at work I have to watch videos.

Still requiring masks & tests is kind of odd in 2023

Thanks for calling this out. I live right near by and was on the verge of payment, but I'm not wasting my time with that.

Yeah i live not too far away and was thinking of signing up. Thats a deal breaker for me. Seems to go beyond a concern for health into a weird paranoia.

In a place where people may be gathering from around the nation or even internationally, i'm not sure what the problem is here, covid or not. I'm sorry that our immunocompromised friends or other at-risk individuals are not important enough for you to change your mind. Panels are always incredibly stuffy and full of odors and other people's coughs and breaths.

I don't know about this conference, but some conferences with policies like this don't really bother enforcing them. It's 2023, do they really think they're going to get anything close to 100% compliance with a mask mandate? And what will they do if someone isn't wearing a mask? Most likely just politely ask you to put one on and then walk away. I highly doubt they are going to have some kind of punitive policy in place. Nobody wants to deal with that.

In my experience, when things were starting to relax a bit maybe 18 months or so ago, but a lot of events I attended still had masking policies, a lot of people were quick to take off masks when eating and drinking, sitting outside, or in otherwise well ventilated spaces. But even people who thought it was getting a bit performative at that point were pretty compliant about following at least the letter of the rules.

This is admittedly 18 months later now but, especially at a community event that pretty much no one is being forced to attend, I expect pretty high compliance.

yeah, not sure how to balance "this is silly, nobody is going to follow this rule" and "this is silly, i'm not going to attend because of this rule"

If I was running some event that had some safety rule, and someone was blatantly ignoring the rule, I'd have them removed by security or police.

If an event has safety rules and doesn't follow them, a couple concerns: (1) that's irresponsible towards people relying on the rules being followed, potentially exposing them to harm, and others to liability; (2) if the event as a whole doesn't have integrity about safety rules, what else don't they have integrity about, and maybe you should have the books checked for fraud, investigate for vendor kickbacks, consider maybe a higher probability of harassment going on, etc.

There is no tech conference on earth that is having people physically removed by police for not wearing a mask.

These policies exist to try to satisfy the different comfort levels people have around covid, but an obvious part of any rule is that if they are impractical or impossible to enforce and a sizable number of people are not following the rule, then it's pretty much pointless. Nobody attending a tech conference with a mask mandate is under the impression that someone who isn't complying with the rule will be removed. They know that some people won't comply.

That's been the case with mask mandates in most places for a very long time. Compliance is low, theres no way (or will) to enforce, and that's not to mention the myriad exceptions to the policy (eg, masks not required when eating or drinking) that essentially make the whole think a joke to being with.

>Nobody attending a tech conference with a mask mandate is under the impression that someone who isn't complying with the rule will be removed.

I would absolutely expect that if someone were blatantly not wearing a mask at an event requiring them, they'd be asked to put one on or leave.

That said,

>the myriad exceptions to the policy

Certainly. Eating/drinking. Generally no masks outside. Most people not wearing them traveling, in taxis, in bars/restaurants, etc. (And mostly not wearing N95 masks.) And then there's questions of masking efficacy anyway. But from what I've seen first hand, even people who got to the point where they were rolling their eyes at tech conference rules were overwhelmingly following the letter of the law.

Yeah it’s an interesting choice. I’ve not been to a conference in forever and have lost touch of what the norm is. I wonder whether the policy is a net up/downside as they try to build interest and get the thing established. My hunch is that it hurts them in attendance, but idk.

I guess it depends upon where in the world you go though my recent conference experience is definitely a post-COVID one. No rules, no masks, no social distancing etc (RISC-V Summit Europe, Barcelona).

I went to the US RISC-V summit in December (San Jose) and they had little badges (red/yellow/green to indicate how comfortable you were with people getting close) and I think they asked people to wear masks but very few did. They also asked for a pre-conference test but I don't think they were checking up on results.

Mandatory, proper face fitting N95 masks seems out of step there. Though I can appreciate it may aid some in attending it will certainly discourage others.

Basically, Linux Foundation events are back to “normal.” Kubecon in April said that they weren’t allowed by local law to mandate requirements but it was pretty clear that was a fig leaf for what they wanted to do anyway.

They did have the comfort level stickers which seems very reasonable.

I think you do still see some community oriented events feeling like they need to bend over backwards to accommodate anyone who still doesn’t feel comfortable around unmasked and unvaccinated people. That’s where the sentiment comes from IMO.

In my country it is like covid never happened. Yet, there are quite a few people for whom covid is still a threat. People with long covid for instance or respiratory illnesses. There are Free Software conferences that take that into account, as part of inclusion.

I hear what you are saying. IMO, the mask and covid measures in Portland feels to me to be more political based.

I really don’t understand the logic in America when it comes to the current thinking about covid measures.

You could say I have a Scandinavian perspective to this, but here in Norway everyone listened and trusted to what the government recommended and/or mandated. It has been a little more than a year since the last pandemic measure was lifted and we have been back to “normal”.

There are no government mandates in effect here in Portland either. Any masking/testing rules in place for the conference are due to the event’s policies.

Government mandates or recommendations[1] for such, at this point.

1. https://www.oregon.gov/oha/covid19/Pages/Masks.aspx

Right. And, given who is running this event, there is some backstory that makes it unsurprising that it's trying to be especially accommodating of people who are vulnerable.

> I really don’t understand the logic in America when it comes to the current thinking about covid measures.

It is not America. It is a very small subset of the 330M+ people living here. I would venture to say 90%+ have not thought about Covid in a long time.

Thanks, I should have been more specific to Portland.

Portland isn't making the rules. A specific open source organization (that is not based in Portland in any material way) is making the rules.

It is a small subset in Portland too.

I'm glad they're at least being honest in advance about it, so I didn't have to waste any time thinking about attending. What really stinks is when conferences pretend to be normal in advance but suddenly spring insanity like this on everyone the day they start.

The opposite has happened as well, perhaps through no fault of the event, when they decide government mandate changes meant they could no longer require vaccinations.

But, in general, I have no problem with events laying out clear policies in advance which allow potential attendees to attend or not attend either because they don't want to wear masks/be vaccinated/be tested or because they feel the event isn't being cautious enough.

A hundred people per day are still dying of covid in the US, and even if you don't die from it, every fresh covid infection is rolling the dice with long covid. Masks and testing for a mass gathering involving lots of out of towners is obviously still appropriate.

It's honestly not clear to me at this point to what degree you can mitigate risks associated with air travel and large gatherings. In late 2021 I finally caught COVID attending an international event with a vaccination and mask requirement. And then it turned out that, in spite of testing negative twice, my very slight cough was in fact COVID when I tested again a week later after attending another event.

> my very slight cough was in fact COVID

If that's all COVID is anymore, then why do we still need to mitigate the risks?

The tests and masks aren't perfect yes, but they shouldn't be dismissed because they do help improve the odds of avoiding covid. And the cost is really minor, so why not still wear a mask and test? I'm at a massive work event and wearing an n95 the entire time has not been much of a hassle at all.

You can always mitigate risk more. If I were required to come into a typical office (which I'm not) and wear a mask all day to mitigate against various infections that would be a big FU. You're of course entitled to feel differently.

Why is it odd? The official CDC guidance now calls out explicit air change guidance and masking if that can't be met or a population is vulnerable. Why should vulnerable people be excluded from this conference, because that's what you're really implying by not masking or taking precautions.

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