Open Source Working Group Minutes RIPE 86
Thursday, 25 May 2023, 14:00 - 15:30 (UTC+2)
Co-Chairs: Marcos Sanz, Martin Winter, Ondrej Filip
Scribe: Michel Stam
Status: Draft
View the stenography transcripts
A. Administrative Matters
Marcos Sanz, Martin Winter, Ondřej Filip
Ondřej, Martin and Ondřej opened the meeting. No new items were added to the agenda.
B. NGI-Zero: EU-Funded Framework for Supporting FLOSS Projects
Niall O’Reilly, Tolerant Networks
The presentation is available at:
https://ripe86.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/6-NGI-Zero-RIPE86-Opensource-NOR.pdf.
Niall O’Reilly presented on Tolerant Networks and the EU project to improve the Next Generation Internet. He elaborated on the NGI project organisation and the NGI initiatives.
No questions were asked.
C. From Peering Manager Features to Standalone Library
Guillaume Mazoyer, Peering Manager Lead Developer
The presentation is available at:
https://ripe86.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/70-RIPE86_OSS_WG_pyixapi.pdf.
Guillaume presented on his experiences converting IX-API, a feature of peering manager into a library. The conversion was motivated by IX-API being seen as a stand-alone library. He showed a feature that was triggered by the rewrite; a new operation for the peering manager project to change the MAC address
Guillaume concluded by requesting support for maintainers of open source projects.
No questions were asked.
D. BIRD 2 - Overview and Future Outlook
Ondřej Zajíček, CZ.NIC
The presentation is available at:
https://ripe86.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/120-slides.pdf.
Ondřej presented on the history of BIRD, its current state and the future of the BIRD project. He highlighted some reasons to upgrade to the current version 2 by discussing the changes BIRD 2 introduced. The end of life for BIRD 1 was announced as the end of 2023. Finally, Ondřej discussed the major changes that will be introduced with BIRD 3.
Alexander Asimov, Yandex, thanked Ondřej for the BIRD project and asked if IS-IS would be implemented.
Ondřej replied that there have been plans for many years to implement IS-IS, but these were never realised.
Alexander also asked if there would be a means added to interact with the BGP daemon to insert route.
Ondřej responded by saying this will be addressed by Maria in the lightning talk.
Alex Band, NLnet Labs, asked whether BIRD is open to requests to move the source code from C to a memory-safe language.
Ondřej responded by saying that rewriting the code is not being considered, but some kind of additional code to validate may be considered.
Marcos Sanz, DE-CIX, commented that the migration from BIRD 1 to BIRD 2 reduced the cold start of the software from 50 minutes to 25 minutes and thanked Maria and the team for their efforts.
An attendee commented by thanking for the project and asking whether gRPC or similar would be implemented.
Ondřej responded by saying this will also be addressed by Maria in the lightning talk.
E. Update from Route Server Support Foundation
Niels Raijer, Chairman RSSF
The presentation is available at:
https://ripe86.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/132-RSSF-RIPE86-presentation-20230524.pdf.
Niels presented on the route server support foundation and its goal to diversify the route servers offered by providing support on OpenBGPD.
The developments on OpenBGPD were mentioned, from a project code perspective as well as with regards to funding and the structure of the foundation.
Niels concluded by asking support for open source developers.
Carsten Schiefner, All Things Internet, commented that he is happy to see the tech fund stretch beyond the borders of Germany.
F. Lightning Talks
F.1 BIRD GUI
Maria Matejka, CZ.NIC
The presentation is available at:
https://ripe86.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/114-2023_05_25_ripe_bird_gui.pdf.
Maria presented on a graphical user interface for the BIRD project by creating a Python CLI-to-object using CBOR (RFC8949). The challenges of using JSON were mentioned and the choice for a binary protocol was explained. A proof of concept of the BIRD GUI using Python CLI-to-object was mentioned and a request was made for contributions.
No questions were asked.
F.2 The RIPE NCC Community Projects Fund
Alastair Strachan, RIPE NCC
The presentation is available at:
https://ripe86.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/104-CPF-OSWG-Lightning-Talk.key.
Alastair presented on the RIPE NCC Community Projects Fund, a project to support innovative projects and ideas that benefit the good of the Internet. He explained the selection process and reminded those interested to apply ahead of the deadline of 31 May 2023.
Martin Winter asked the audience whether they knew of two projects that have been funded this way.
G. Working Group Further Organisational Matters
Marcos Sanz, Martin Winter, Ondřej Filip
The presentation is available at:
https://ripe86.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/108-RIPE86-Org-Matters.pptx.
Ondřej announced that he would step down as co-chair after the meeting to concentrate on his role as the RIPE NCC Executive Board Chair and thanked the working group.
Martin thanked Ondřej. He mentioned how they spoke about starting the Working Group together at RIPE 65 and that the first session was at RIPE 66. He invited the group to think about a new Chair over summer and expressed the wish to have someone new step up to volunteer to chair the working group by autumn.
Marcos Sanz added that nominations can be sent to the working group mailing list. He spoke about the absence of activity on the mailing list and said that as Chairs they sometimes wondered if no activity on the list meant that something was wrong. He asked whether the mailing list would be the right medium for discussions going forward, pointing out that his children don’t have email addresses. He further asked whether the audience was happy with the working group and its charter – was it going in the right direction? Was the charter of working group as created in Dublin in 2013 still relevant?
Alex Band, NLnet Labs commented that many presentations made in the group could also be in other Working Groups, which sometimes could be an even better fit for them like the BIRD presentation. Over the past years, a lot of the projects discussed happened to be open source but the open source aspect of the projects was not discussed as much. He added that a focus on how to get people to contribute to a project or make it financially sustainable would be valuable to the working group.
Martin responded that the initial view was to give the community better contact with projects like Quagga and BIRD, and to give the open source developers a chance to make connections with people and possibly get funding. He said that Alex’s feedback was partially along those lines, but also diverged a bit from it, and he invited Alex to continue the discussion after the session.
Alex further commented that when he started his RPKI project, he set up a mailing list and a Discord server. The Discord server has over 500 members and is very active, and that he was considering closing the mailing list altogether because it’s not being used. He added that Slack is also a good option.
Niels Raijer, Chairman RSSF commented that the developer of Curl never received funding until the sovereign tech fund came along. He also said that the Discord server that NLNOG uses had seen more messages than the total number on the mailing list.
Maria from BIRD commented that she wondered whether BIRD would fit better in the Routing Working Group or in the Open Source Working Group, but if there was a clearer indication that projects should be more about generic open source issues then she might have chosen to present in the Routing Working Group instead.
Martin reminded everyone present to share their thoughts on selecting a new Working Group chair.
Ondřej thanked the scribe and the stenographers and closed the session.