Weekly Journal 95 - Open Libre Free 2022

Open Libre Free 2022

Last week I decided to take a break for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, but this week I’m back with a conference report for Open Libre Free 2022. OLF, formerly known as Ohio Linuxfest, is a two day conference celebrating Linux and other aspects of Free, Libre, Open Source Software (FLOSS) and open culture held annually in Columbus, Ohio. It’s a small conference, typically there are a few hundred attendees, but it is always one of my favorites every year. It’s not big and flashy like a vendor conference, and it doesn’t suffer from undue influence from corporate sponsors. It’s a really nice time to get together with other open source enthusiasts, see some interesting talks, and have some lively discussions. If you like Linux and open source, and you live relatively close to Columbus, I would highly recommend attending.

Typically there are three tracks on the main day. The first consists of the invited talks from various speakers, the second is reserved for sponsor talks, and the third offers professional training towards LPI certification. The LPI training costs extra, but the other two tracks are available to all. On the evening of the first day, they have “Birds of a Feather” (BOF) sessions. A BOF is similar to an open space or an unconference format where individuals or groups sign up for a space to hold a discussion, and anybody who wants to can show to participate. They are usually some of my favorite parts of the conference. This year, my favorite talks were “Maturing Information Security Programs with Risk Register and Risk Scoring” by Rafeeq Rehman and Ansible: the Evolution, Ecosystem, Execution Environments, Event-Driven, and Kubernetes by Joshua Preston. Jon “maddog” Hall gave an excellent closing keynote titled “United We Stand”.

If you would like to take a look at some of the talks, OLF posts videos of the event on their YouTube channel. They also stream the primary conference track on YouTube during the event.

I’d like to give a big “Thank You!” to the organizers, volunteers, and sponsors who made this another memorable event. I’m looking forward to doing it again next year, and I highly recommend that you check it out too.