bailar24

Ben Minerds
http://linux.conf.au/schedule/present...
How does a council scraping initiative started in the UK evolve to influence and inform how the Victorian Government manages its information? Planning Alerts was originally a UK service to allow people to subscribe to be notified when there was a planning application near them regardless of council boundaries. It's success has also been replicated (and improved) in Australia. It seems obvious to many of us that a significant factor is that the initial project and those that followed it were Open Source and open to the Communities they served. How can we better demonstrate to government the value of Open Standards and Open Data than by making it happen?

Caskey L. Dickson
http://linux.conf.au/schedule/present...
Go is an excellent open source multiplatform language for doing cross-platform development which is ideal for ops tools. If you target multi-platform, multi-architecture environments, come learn how Go enables you to write once and run anywhere. No more need for kludgy shell scripts!

This talk will cover the built in features of Golang that make it possible to write your code on one platform and seamlessly deliver it to many different operating systems and architectures. As a devops engineer I have tools and services that need to support multiple operating systems running on different CPU architectures.

You will learn the specific ways to generate *bsd-386 binaries on Windows-x64, android-arm binaries on Linux-ppc and all combinations in between. I'll also be covering coding techniques to keep this manageable and libraries that support you in things like file system navigation.

Johan Codinha
http://linux.conf.au/schedule/present...
The victorian biodiversity is facing constant danger, from bush fires to pest and weeds just to name few. To protect the different ecosystem from natural and human disaster the government needs data !
I am going to walk you thru the history of biodiversity data collection in Victoria ( it's a young country so it's gonna be a short walk ), from hundreds of government employee surveying the countryside in the 80's to 2016 where we rely almost exclusively on citizen scientists to provide accurate data.
Then we will have a look at tools of the past, present and future for collecting biodiversity data and what is the role of standards and open software.
Government agencies are taking land management decision based on biodiversity databases, we will have a look at how the data is beeing verified and what are the potential security risks.

Keith Packard
http://linux.conf.au/schedule/present...
Traditional Linux storage is built using several block layers and
adding a file system on top. You can construct a block device out of a
file system using the loop driver, but that interface loses some key
functionality present in the block layer, most importantly the DAX
interfaces.

As an alternative, we can squash some of the the loop driver
functionality into a file system and present both file system
interfaces as well as block device interfaces from the same driver.

This provides a uniform storage management interface where a single
'wholesale' file system aggregates a set of the available storage into
a single logical store which can then be arbitrarily dis-aggregated
into individual storage volumes which can then be used as traditional
block devices for 'retail' file systems within the host OS or
passed to virtual machines for storage in that environment.

This technique is being used within The Machine, a project within
Hewlett Packard Enterprise, to provide convenient management of a pool
of fabric attached memory shared among many Linux instances.

The presentation will show how the wholesale file system is managed
and how the block layer is exported from it. Additional details about
how storage locality is controlled using extended attributes will be
included.

Allison Randal
http://linux.conf.au/schedule/present...
The early days of the Open Source movement were all about creating an approachable on-ramp to software freedom. We focused strongly on the practical benefits of free software, and refined the message hoping to help the business sector better understand what we'd been saying since 1983. We succeeded to such an extent that modern Open Source is characterized by active use, participation, and contribution from the largest Fortune 50 tech giants to the smallest Silicon Valley startups, and everything in between. Success at our first goal doesn't mean we're done, it only means we're due to define the next phase of Open Source. The potential of what we might accomplish, using the resources of the entire tech industry, is both inspiring and daunting. Will we live up to that potential? This talk explores the past, present, and future of Open Source, and its impact on technology innovation in the industry today.

Cat Allman
http://linux.conf.au/schedule/present...
"Open" is a concept that has spread far beyond software engineering, into government, data, publishing and science. In parallel, the world is embracing "making" as methodology, avocation and profession. Google has had an Open Source Programs Office for more than ten years, but our Making & Science team, an offshoot of the open source team, is just 2 years old. Come hear about what we're up to and why Google has a small (but mighty!) team working to support making and science, inside the company and out. I will also illustrate how the meme is spreading by sharing some of my favorite open science and STEAM ED programs.

E. Dunham
http://linux.conf.au/schedule/present...
Rust is a systems programming language that runs blazingly fast, prevents
segfaults, and guarantees thread safety. If you ask users "what's the catch",
they'll tell you about the challenging learning curve that this powerful new
tool requires.

Presented by a Mozilla Research team member who works with the Rust language
and with Servo (a browser engine written in Rust), this tutorial assumes
familiarity with basic programming concepts (loops, conditionals, functions)
but will require no prior experience with strongly typed languages, Rust, or
systems programming. You'll learn the key concepts necessary for successful
Rust programming, as well as how to continue exploring the language after LCA.

Joe Robinson
http://linux.conf.au/schedule/present...
If you've taken a glance at the docs of an opensource project you contribute
to, or something you've worked on either professionally or for a hobby, and
thought "that word doesn't sound right when I read it" or "is there a better
way to write the steps needed to work this project?" this short talk aims to
provide\ practical and effective writing style information for new and
experienced developers. Using basic computer science, this talk describes
and explains writing style points such as how to use definite articles,
active voice, punctuation, and plain language.

Joel Sing
http://linux.conf.au/schedule/present...
As anyone who has written code that implements a TLS client or server will know,
many of the existing APIs (namely OpenSSL) are confusing, difficult to use and
full of pitfalls for the unwary. Many security issues (and less serious bugs)
are due to the mistakes made by human developers, while trying to navigate their
way through the various function calls, return codes and missing functionality.

libtls is a component of the [LibreSSL project]( http://www.libressl.org/); a
project that started as a fork of OpenSSL following the infamous
[heartbleed]( http://www.heartbleed.com/) incident. While the general goals for
LibreSSL are to modernise the codebase, improve security, and apply best practice
development processes, libtls aims to completely rethink the TLS API.

This talk will cover some of the many issues with existing TLS/SSL APIs, prior
to looking at how libtls has been designed to be different. The history of libtls
will be discussed, before detailing the API development process that has been
used, which has allowed the library to morph and improve over time. The set of
rules that have been put in place to ensure that the API is as developer friendly
as possible will be explained, followed by a discussion of the overall litmus
test and proving ground that has been used during its design and development.

Donna Benjamin
http://linux.conf.au/schedule/present...
What will the legal landscape look like for free software over the next few years? What can or should the international free software community do about it? We'll be looking at these questions and taking questions from the audience.

Panel participants: Kate Chapman, Michael Cordover, Deb Nicholson, Richard Fontana
Moderated by Donna Benjamin

Matthew Oliver
http://linux.conf.au/schedule/present...
Background: Swift is an open-source, highly available, distributed, eventually-consistent object storage system. As the project has matured, so has the need to store more and more data. Some sites have moved to using expensive solid state drives (SSDs) for storage, but there has to be a better way we can solve this in software, right?

This presentation continues our Swift sharding adventure from where we left it last year - but now addressing a new set of challenges we've come across in our proof of concept container sharding implementation. During testing of even larger data sets we've come across a number of limitations of the underlying SQLite database, meaning we've had to develop work arounds so that we are able to shard even larger containers. Come and see how we performed large scale testing, how we narrowed down where the limitations were, how we developed our solutions to these problems, all the while trying to maintain backwards comparability.

James Dumay
http://linux.conf.au/schedule/present...
The Jenkins project has embarked on an ambitious new project, Blue Ocean, which
is tasked with rethinking the user experience of Jenkins for modern teams with a
focus on improving comperehnsion of DevOps and Continuous Delivery.

It is a direct response to a change in mindest of modern developers where by they
value tools that are not only functional but are designed to fit into their
workflow seamlessly in a way that is a joy to use daily.

James Dumay, Blue Ocean community leader and Product Manager at CloudBees, takes
attendees on a journey on why a better user experience can improve comprehension
of DevOps and Continuous Delivery for software teams, a tour of what's to come
in the 1.0 release, the roadmap beyond and what it means for the future of the
Jenkins project.

Joey Hess
http://linux.conf.au/schedule/present...
Imagine a world in which gpg was not hard to use, and was used widely. Users exchange encrypted email, gpg sign comments on websites, make encrypted backups, and so on.

What happens, in that world, when a user's gpg private key gets deleted? The only backup is encrypted with the lost private key. Catch 22.

We're not in that world, and so we don't often worry about this problem. Unless we've lost gpg key ourselves. But solving the gpg key backup problem seems a necessary step in the path toward that world.

Most ways to back up gpg private keys require physical security, like a safe to keep the key in, and often cumbersome backup and restore procedures.

Keysafe makes backup and restore easy, by backing the private key up to the cloud. It necessarily trades off some security to do so, but manages to make it very expensive to compromise its backups. I'll explain how Argon2, Shamir Secret Sharing, relatively weak passwords, and AES decryption puzzles are combined in keysafe to accomplish this.

David Bell
http://linux.conf.au/schedule/present...
Businesses and households are becoming inextricably attached to their technology, but what happens when the technology isn't available? How do you keep your business churning out widgets and enable your clients to receive their services?

But what about at home? IoT is only growing more and more ingrained into our lives, what happens when your lights don't work due to a firmware bug/internet outage? What do you do when your IoT front door lock doesn't let you in? Or potentially worse, out?

And lastly, in both cases, how do you handle death? We all store countless passwords and access details in our brains, how do our colleagues and family gain access to them when we aren't around to tell them?


In this talk we'll discuss BCP, DRP, Digital Legacy, as well as all these issues, how to begin planning, how to "Break the Glass", how to securely enable your employer and family access to your systems, and how to prepare your digital legacy.

*[BCP]: Business Continutiy Plan: a systematic approach to prevention, increased resiliency, and recovery to threats to a company (or, in this case, an individual)
*[DRP]: Disaster Recovery Plan: a plan for recovery of IT systems following a disaster
*[Digital Legacy]: Digital Legacy refers to a person's digital assets left behind after their death. For example, online accounts.

Deb Nicholson
http://linux.conf.au/schedule/present...
Conflict sucks! The FOSS community is full of passionate people with many, many differing ideas on how to achieve our shared goals. Disagreements seem inevitable, but what if they could be handled rationally, in a way that left everyone feeling at least OK about the outcome? It's possible. You can learn to cut to the heart of the disagreement, mediate and move forward.

Many of us avoid dealing with tricky situations or let conflict avoidance keep us from accomplishing amazing things together. Conflict can be handled -- without flamethrowers -- and the process will often make your community stronger. It just takes time, a slightly relaxed ego and a willingness to see the best outcome for the most people. This talk covers when to handle conflict, strategies for both one-on-one situations and group situations and tips on how to scale your conflict resolution skills, like a boss.

Ben Martin
http://linux.conf.au/schedule/present...
ODF is an open standard for storing office documents like
text, spreadsheets, drawings, and presentations.While ODF1.2
has been a standard for years, most tools do not fully
implement the entire specification. See how many current
generation office suites implement and or ignore the features
of the ODF specification. I'll also cover some open source
tools which you can use to check how well your own documents
are preserved across many different office suites. Some
results are available at
http://autotests.opendocumentformat.org/

I have been working on tools to help you work out what is
supported by each office application and see how a document
is presented on a platform that you do not have access to.
odfautotests runs hundreds of tests that have been derived
from the ODF standard, with each test aimed at showing how well each office application preserves a specific attribute or element of the ODF standard.

So for example you can see at a glance what
office application will throw away ruby text, and also see
how the ruby text is presented. While you might not care
about ruby text, returning an updated document to a Japanese
client with it stripped out will likely lead to tension.
odfserver is a new tool created this year to allow files to
be uploaded to a central server and have numerous office
applications load and save each file to test compatibility.

These testing tools are useful for a few groups of people. End users looking to use ODF and knowing what is properly perserved in their document. Small tests showing failing attributes are gold for developers who can then formulate plans as to which parts of the specification should be supported by their project next.

Chris Neugebauer / Karen Sandler

Audrey Lobo-Pulo
http://linux.conf.au/schedule/present...
“The bird that would soar above the plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings” – Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy

Governments across the world are becoming increasingly focused on ‘open government’ and sharing information, thereby improving transparency and accountability. Among the more recent developments in the open government space is the idea that government models that are used to design and evaluate policy are freely available to the public to use, distribute and modify without restriction.

Government Open Source Models (GOSMs) have the potential to play an important role in public debate by engaging the community and other stakeholders in policy analysis. The new generation of information sharing, GOSMs are the future of effective open governments and embody the principles and philosophy of Open Source.

This presentation discusses the issues around ‘how’ GOSMs may be released and puts forward the concept of a ‘models.gov’ platform which may be integrated with government data platforms available today.

The practical implications of how the Open Source Software (OSS) licensing of GOSMs could shift the balance of power in public debate between government and external stakeholders are discussed. Moreover the choice of OSS licensing is also likely to affect vendor lock-in and government software procurement.

With countries such as the U.S, U.K and NZ currently looking at issues around releasing and reusing government developed software, the Open Source community has an opportunity to contribute to discussions on how this might best be achieved and what this would mean for future open source contributions to public policy.

Disclaimer: The views presented belong to Audrey Lobo-Pulo and are not necessarily those of the Australian Government.

John Dickinson
http://linux.conf.au/schedule/present...
Recently, the OpenStack Swift project released a feature that implements server-side encryption. The feature is designed to protect user data from being exposed if drives were to leave the cluster, something that can happen intentionally through an RMA process or unintentionally from mistakes or malicious intent. If drives leave the cluster, we want to be sure that the users' data is protected and impossible to recover. Swift's at-rest encryption feature encrypts user data and metadata with AES using a unique key for every object stored.

In this talk, we will cover the details of how the server-side encryption works, including the on-disk format, and we'll dig into the key-management used. Also, we'll discuss the ways in which this feature can be improved to support more advanced functionality and more robust key management.

Luke Bacon
http://linux.conf.au/schedule/present...
Imagine the future you want for our societies and democracy. You can start building the tools and services of that future today.

For 8 years the [OpenAustralia Foundation]( https://www.openaustraliafoundation.o...) has run open source projects to transform democracy. We’re a tiny team but millions of people have used our services to learn about and impact what happens in their society. At the core of our practice is collaboration, sharing and openness.

In day-to-day development we determinedly focus on the immediate, practical benefits to people who use our work—but, there are specific long-term hacks underlying each of our projects: futures we imagine and hope to step our way towards. We create services with immediate practical use, but that change the way you see yourself and your role in our democracy.

In this presentation we’ll look at the long-term hacks that underlie our project *[Right To Know]( https://www.righttoknow.org.au/)*. *Right To Know* makes it much easier to use your Freedom of Information rights to access any document held by Australian government bodies—you’re right to know about the projects and policies that impact your life. Right To Know makes simple changes to the way you access government information, but aims to support a transformation in how we all are involved in organising our society.

By looking at how Right To Know works to push us towards certain futures, you’ll see how our approach works in practice and, most importantly, how you can start civic hacking towards the future you want.