Distributing Free Software: Herding Cats
Summary
The basic challenge of distributing Free Software is compiling that awesome open source code into machine code for different Linux distributions so it's easily consumable for users. Sounds simple, but it isn't. If you look at the dependencies of a typical software project you will find thousands of other software projects in the stack. They build on top of each other, have functional dependencies, sometimes they are interdependent, they conflict with each other and what not. In short: Building Free Software is like herding cats.
Let me show you how the Open Build Service (OBS) makes this possible, how it helps Free Software developers to automatically and consistently build binary packages from free and open source code.
Type
Talk
Language
English
Speaker
For more than a 20 years I am a rigorous practitioner of Free Software development. I love the raw power of communities collaborating and I believe that everyone should be able to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software that is eating the world. My day job at SUSE.com is leading a team of engineers hacking, operating and maintaining the Linux distribution development platform Open Build Service. A massive Ruby on Rails/Perl application. In my spare time I practice my skills by developing an event organization app, the Open Source Event Manager, by operating a lot of the server infrastructure of the openSUSE project, and by teaching free software development with programs such as RailsGirls Summer of Code.
