Southern California's open source and free software expo
SCaLE 18x
With numerous exhibitors and workshops, SCaLE 18x covered a wide range of open source topics.
SCaLE 18x, in Pasadena, California, from March 5-8, 2020, offered over 150 exhibitors and nearly 130 workshops, tutorials, and events.
The event kicked off on Thursday morning with workshops, including tracks on embedded, PostgreSQL, and sponsored topics. Probably the best workshop on Thursday was the introduction to containers and Kubernetes. After being reorganized into a full day event, demand for this workshop was greater than the presenters could have anticipated. In the sponsored track a workshop on working with Jenkins and continuous delivery was offered.
On Friday, topics like Kubernetes, GitLab, PostgreSQL, and related issues were presented throughout the day. At 2pm, the exhibition hall opened to a large crowd who grabbed any GNU/Linux swag that wasn't nailed down. Aleksey Tsalolikhin, from the Linux Professional Institute, gave a presentation entitled "DevOps Tools Engineer Preparation Session." Other events on the schedule included a GitLab community day, several DevOps sessions, "Getting Started with FreeBSD," and many others.

On Saturday morning, Paul Vixie's keynote speech, "DNS Wars, Episode IV: A New Bypass," covered his work in the DNS field since 1989, including inventing many of the monitoring and filtering capabilities now used by nearly all DNS services. He discussed the web-based DNS over HTTP (DoH) protocol, which is being pushed by Mozilla and others.
If you are familiar with Bradley Kuhn [1], you know how good his public presentations are. Kuhn gave a talk on "What'll We Do When FOSS Licenses Jump the Shark? The Next Season of Copyleft License Drafting and Promulgation." He discussed the current situation where proprietary commercial organizations publish open source software licenses that are not open source, as well as Copyleft-next, an experimental effort to create a new and easier-to-understand copyleft license.
On Sunday, Sha Wallace-Stepter and Jessica McKellar gave a keynote talk entitled "From Prison to Python: What Is the Free Software and Broader Tech Community's Role in Criminal Justice Reform?" The keynote covered how Wallace-Stepter learned to program in prison while serving a life sentence for assault with a firearm.

As a smaller venue, SCaLE offers advantages over a large-scale GNU/Linux event. At SCaLE, it is much easier to attend workshops or presentations, as well as to connect with other people in your area of interest. If you missed SCaLE 18x, you can view the long list of presentations on YouTube [2]. I hope to see you next year at SCaLE.
Infos
- Bradley Kuhn: https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/18x/presentations/whatll-we-do-when-foss-licenses-jump-shark
- SCaLE 18x on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/socallinuxexpo/videos
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Direct Download
Read full article as PDF:
Price $2.95
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Find SysAdmin Jobs
News
-
KDE Plasma 5.27 Beta is Ready for Testing
The latest beta iteration of the KDE Plasma desktop is now available and includes some important additions and fixes.
-
Netrunner OS 23 Is Now Available
The latest version of this Linux distribution is now based on Debian Bullseye and is ready for installation and finally hits the KDE 5.20 branch of the desktop.
-
New Linux Distribution Built for Gamers
With a Gnome desktop that offers different layouts and a custom kernel, PikaOS is a great option for gamers of all types.
-
System76 Beefs Up Popular Pangolin Laptop
The darling of open-source-powered laptops and desktops will soon drop a new AMD Ryzen 7-powered version of their popular Pangolin laptop.
-
Nobara Project Is a Modified Version of Fedora with User-Friendly Fixes
If you're looking for a version of Fedora that includes third-party and proprietary packages, look no further than the Nobara Project.
-
Gnome 44 Now Has a Release Date
Gnome 44 will be officially released on March 22, 2023.
-
Nitrux 2.6 Available with Kernel 6.1 and a Major Change
The developers of Nitrux have officially released version 2.6 of their Linux distribution with plenty of new features to excite users.
-
Vanilla OS Initial Release Is Now Available
A stock GNOME experience with on-demand immutability finally sees its first production release.
-
Critical Linux Vulnerability Found to Impact SMB Servers
A Linux vulnerability with a CVSS score of 10 has been found to affect SMB servers and can lead to remote code execution.
-
Linux Mint 21.1 Now Available with Plenty of Look and Feel Changes
Vera has arrived and although it is still using kernel 5.15, there are plenty of improvements sure to please everyone.