Discussion: should Ada have its own FOSDEM DevRoom?

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Dear Ada community,

as some of you may know (since you attended the Ada Monthly Meetup), I want to open a discussion about FOSDEM and whether we should ask for an specific Ada DevRoom.

In the following month it is likely that FOSDEM will once again open the submission for stands and DevRooms. Therefore, we need to decide whether to apply or not. The simple answer may be “OF COUSE YOU SHOULD APPLY!”, but let me present an alternative take here… What if we don’t apply for a specific Ada DevRoom, and instead mix ourselves with the rest of the communities, broadening the reach of Ada?

Those who were not able to attend, may be surprised by this question, so let me explain why I think it is worth having a discussion about this and the alternative.

First, lets look at the past and what has been the history of the Ada DevRoom in FOSDEM. The Ada community had been present for more than a decade in FOSDEM, serving as a meetup hub for Ada aficionados, users and curious people. I have also received positive feedback about the Ada DevRoom from people who had attended it in the past but they themselves were no Ada programmers; they valued the language and the quality of the topics discussed. However, since the pandemic, Ada has not had a DevRoom, and we have tried… In 2023 we were not given a DevRoom, so we tried to get a stand, which we received. The stand, in my opinion, was a very nice success and plenty of people came, asked questions, took stickers and played with Tama’s game, which was the main attraction of the stand, gathering a large following among young people. Fast forward to 2024 and once again, we were denied a DevRoom, but this time, we were also not given a stand, leaving the Ada community fully out of the FOSDEM conference…

This idea to broaden the scope of Ada comes from a comment done by @JC001 in AEiC 2024 (Ada Developers Workshop) during my talk “Ada Community Advocacy”. There he mentioned that Ada should not have any specific conference or a secluded environment. He pointed out that Ada is great for many many tasks and fields, so why limit ourselves to our own community and not go to other generic venues where Ada shines? And I think many people here (including myself) agree with that take. We always say how Ada would be great for X or Y, we complain that many people have wrong or outdated ideas about Ada and that new languages barely improve (if anything at all) on what Ada did 40 years ago… But we never go to them to shown them “the truth”. And those people are not going to (generally) come to Ada to learn more…

So, lets analyse both ideas:

Specific Ada DevRoom or stand

We could try to submit an application for the DevRoom and have, as it has been the case in the past, a specific Ada community focused experience. We can ask for the submission of talks and speakers, of which there definitely will be a few. We could promote it and encourage people to come, as it has been the case in the past. Those outside of the Ada community/language but present in FOSDEM may decide to come and listen to a couple of talks given in the DevRoom. This is how it has been in the past editions. However, something tells me that this is unlikely to happen as we (most likely) won’t be accepted… But there is hoping!

If we are not accepted, we could once again ask for a stand. The stand was great to have chats with curious people that wanted to know more about Ada or know more about what we had in display on the table. However, it did not serve as a nice meeting point for the Ada community to gather, though we did for a nice group there!

Main issues I see with the DevRoom

Well… as I do not expect the DevRoom to be accepted… the organisers (us) would put a bit of effort into a failed venture. But that is the least of my concerns.

Having an Ada specific DevRoom insulates the Ada community from the wider FOSDEM ecosystem. With large projects, that is a good thing. However, as Ada hast lost traction compared to other communities. Many people, specially the younger generation, are favouring other languages/interests and do not seem to know much about Ada or don’t seem to be willing to learn about it (in comparison to other communities). Therefore, a specific DevRoom may be detrimental to the broadening of the Ada community and outreach…

Melting ourselves in other communities.

I won’t explain in detail why this is useful or beneficial (go back and read the paragraph with the comment that Jeff did during AEiC 2024). FOSDEM has several DevRooms, see their list. As you can see, there are rooms for Embedded systems & Automobile; Cryptography; GCC; LLVM; Microkernels & OSes; Emulators; Firmware; RISC-V…

Ada has something of great value that could be talked about in any of those aforementioned rooms. Ada is used plentifully in embedded systems and some Automobiles; we have verified cryptographic tools, GNAT is based on GCC and there is now an LLVM front-end which could greatly benefit from some marketing; we have several OSes and Microkernels, etc…

The people attending those talks would come for the topic/project at hand and would (hopefully) receive a nice showcase of the Ada language :slight_smile: I think this way, many more people would be willing to take an honest look at the language. This would also help dissipate the perception that Ada is not used anymore, that it cannot tackle tasks that newer more modern languages can (thanks to their “innovative” design) and that Ada is keeping up-to-date with current trends (Ada 2022).

This approach would broaden the reach and exposure of Ada to new people and communities and I think this would help greatly the Ada community. For the authors/speakers of the talks it should also be a nice experience since they would be presenting their projects to communities that analyse them for what the project actually is, and not just in what programming language it is written in :wink:

Negative aspects about not proposing an Ada DevRoom

First things first, what I just wrote above can still be done even if we have an Ada DevRoom! We could ask for one and independently to the decission that is taken by FOSDEM, the above still holds true! Though going to other DevRooms would be less… “needful” if it were the case…

We would also loose our small meetup place. However, FOSDEM has rooms available for general meetups, known as BoF (Birds of a Flock) and can be reserved for one hour for people to meet over specific topics. So we could ask for one there :slight_smile:

Closing remarks

So… having said all this… What is your opinion? What is your take? I would like to have a nice discussion about this and I want the input of the community here. So please, do leave a comment and voice your ideas!

All the best,
Fer

Disclaimer

I support broadening the scope and outreach of Ada. Therefore, I prefer that, for the time being, there would be no Ada DevRoom and I would like to see more community involvement (you the reader) in other areas/communities. It would also take a bit of work out of my shoulders. So I may not have been fully impartial with regards to the points made above :confused:

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The ideal might be to try and get talks given in other rooms and if refused then to be in an Ada dev room or other forum then collated together as a bunch of videos after the event. My thoughts are that talks in other rooms advertise Ada but the chances of a talk being refused is higher than for an Ada dev room. In case the higher chances of heckling or difficult questions put some off then I guess there is the option of a talk during an Ada event like an ada meetup. Maybe someone experienced in a rooms topic if available might like to accompany just to help answer questions at the end?

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@Irvise Do you have clues that lead you to think they will reject the Ada devroom? What I remember is that they are looking for some kind of rotation in the devrooms, so we may have a chance.

“Melting ourselves in other communities”: it might difficult to convince individual devroom organizers that we have something meaningful to bring to their topics.

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Ada Dev Room:

a1) Preaching to the converted.
a2) Maybe some who have heard about Ada from rust might go.
a3) Most people who have heard about Ada have heard from someone who lied about it, you know the ones.

Getting talks in other rooms:

b1) Each proposal would need to include points specific to that project which others don’t (or can’t) make which are specific to Ada’s abilities.
b2) People could still leave the room before the talk starts due to the Ada name, see a3 above, unless the implementation language is revealed at the end.

I don’t know what the answer is.

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Hi all, some initial answers,

The talks given in other DevRooms should appeal mainly to the devrooms topics/themes. The goal is not to directly advertise Ada, but have it done indirectly through the showcase of the results of those projects. Taking this as the base of the idea, there should be no reason for a DevRoom to have a higher chance of refusing an “Ada” talk :slight_smile:

I have no clues. But looking at the selection of DevRooms for this year and the noticeable lack of space that FOSDEM has, I feel like it is very likely we won’t be accepted again. After all, in order to leave room for us, they would have to reduce someone elses’ time-slot/decline their DevRoom submission. Also since this year we did not even get a stand… Well… I am weary of our chances…

We could also try asking for half a day of a DevRoom, which may increase our chances of being accepted…

There is no need to add “Ada” in the name. For example “SPARKNaCl, an automatically verified crypto library that can run in your embedded system all the way to your server”. The “longer” title could add Ada or SPARK somewhere. But the name of the talk would have to be chosen by each author. I do not want to pressure anybody into naming their things one way or another.

Me neither…
Though thank you for your post. It dryly summarises what I wanted to say :slight_smile:

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Point of information: while indeed part of the audience in past Ada DevRooms consisted of “the converted”, this was most often a (small) minority.

Many people attended presentations out of curiosity to hear what Ada is all about (especially intro type talks) or to hear about specific areas of application, specific projects, etc.

I have always felt that the Ada DevRooms did exactly what we intended: offer a meeting place for the Ada community AND be an outreach event to attract new people to the Ada language and community. It definitely provided Ada large visibility not only to the FOSDEM participants but even outside, already just by the fact that there was an Ada DevRoom in the schedule.

Additionally: an Ada DevRoom has a lower threshold for potential presenters to submit a proposal than to require submitting to “other” DevRooms. And those who tried the latter in years when there was no Ada DevRoom (mind you, that has happened also in the 16 years before the pandemic): there were only some who did that, and only very few have been accepted.

So IMHO there is a lot of value in trying to get an Ada DevRoom, for multiple reasons as pointed out above. And if not successful, as a backup plan trying to have an Ada stand plus presentations in other DevRooms.

HTH

Dirk

PS: sorry for not having been able to join the Monthly Ada Meetup.

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Thanks for your feedback Dirk! I will take it (severely) into account as your experience precedes you ^^

No worries about it!

Also bumping the thread. I would like to hear more opinions!

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I don’t generally have the capability to attend, so I don’t have a direct preference. For me, I just hope we get some presence at FOSDEM (and hopefully we can have videos of presentations done online at some point).

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As expected, FOSDEM will be taking place the first weekend of February FOSDEM 2024 - FOSDEM 2025 dates: 1 & 2 February 2025

It will also be FOSDEM’s 25th anniversary! More info to be posted in the following weeks :slight_smile:

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Hi, I am never able to attend FOSDEM, but I think an Ada dev room is still worthwhile. This is mainly because it will be a much lower barrier to entry for those who want to share their Ada project, especially if it would mainly appeal to those already interested in the language. For instance, HAC is a really interesting project, but may not be appealing to those using Python. If someone has an Ada project where Ada is not the main hook, then he/she can consider other devrooms to get wider exposure and thus help Ada’s exposure. Lastly, the mere existence of an Ada devroom would remind people that the language is still kicking.

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Very good point.
Regarding HAC specifically, I plan already for future presentations to focus on the pair HAC - “full Ada” as a solution for what is often called the “two-language problem”.
So it may be interesting for people doing Python, Lua, etc. in a professional context.

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Maybe get Maya Posch involved?

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Note that you can always attend “online”, either live or afterwards, as all presentations at FOSDEM are streamed and recorded.

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When they do it correctly.

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It’s time to come to a decision… :wink:

FOSDEM published its call for DevRoom proposals: FOSDEM 2025 - Call for presentations - FOSDEM 2025 call for devrooms

Deadline is October 10.

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Hi all,

after seeing the positive response to having (at least trying) an Ada DevRoom, I will try to organise it again!

Of course, this does not mean that we will get it. But as I said in the opening post, if we end up not getting it, we can always try for an stand and talks in other DevRooms.

I am currently a bit overwhelmed with work and other things (such as writing an article for the AUJ!) but I hope to copy paste the information that I sent last year for the DevRoom proposal for you, the community to comment on it.

Best regards,
Fer

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Let’s not forget the “lighting talks” (do they still have them at FOSDEM? My last attendance was pre-pandemic).

Sure, they are short (not so short for someone with academic background like myself: 15 minutes is the typical conference talk), but

  • The theme is “open,” that is we do not need to find something related with a non-Ada DevRoom theme
  • Since the talks are short, I think that it is more probable that people will stay “by inertia.” Maybe they are not especially curious about Ada, but rather than moving just for that talk, they stay in the room
  • Short talks means that many talks can be scheduled, increasing the possibility of acceptance
  • A lighting talk can be used to talk briefly about some aspects of Ada not commonly found in other languages like formal checking, contracts, and so on… For example, if you allow me some shameless self-citation, I could try to convert some dev.to posts of mine [1-3] into lighting talks

Oh, yes, BTW, DevRooms and lighting talks are not mutually exclusive.

[1] Reasons for loving Ada: Type invariants (because bugs shouldn’t sleep…)
[2] Proving the correctness of a binary search procedure with SPARK/Ada
[3] Safer set-uid programs in Ada with the suid-helper library

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Hi all,

as promised, here is the text that I sent for FOSDEM 2024. Please, comment on it and rewrite it as you see fit. I may include your suggestions in the final form. Oh, and before that, I will be in a conference starting the 8th of October. That means that I need to get this sent before the 7th!!!

Also, who would like to be an organiser of the DevRoom? You will have to be present there and have some level of commitment; I will also need your email address for the submission form. @DirkCraeynest, can I count with you?

And the call for stands was just opened! FOSDEM 2025 Call for presentations - FOSDEM 2025 call for stands (the deadline is passed that of the DevRoom submissions).

And I need the input of the community about an issue… How much of a DevRoom we ask for? We have been asking for a full day (Saturday) but maybe we would have a higher chance if we ask for a half a day one… What do we do? In the past submission I pointed out in the notes that we could use a half a day one, but that was not given to us as an alternative…

Here is what was submitted this year (similar to past submission forms):

=====================================================

The FOSDEM 2024 - Call for devrooms organisers

Full proposal content:

Proposal title: Ada

Notes: Ada is a general-purpose programming language originally designed
for safety- and mission-critical software engineering. It is used
extensively in air traffic control, rail transportation, aerospace,
nuclear, financial services, medical devices, etc. It is also perfectly
suited for open source development.

Awareness of safety and security issues in software systems is
increasing. Multi-core platforms are now abundant. These are some of the
reasons that the Ada programming language and technology attracts more
and more attention, among others due to Ada’s support for programming by
contract and for multi-core targets. The latest Ada language definition
was updated this year, giving birth to the Ada 2022 standard. Work on
new features is ongoing, such as improved support for fine-grained
parallelism, which were introduced in the new standard. The Ada-related
technology, SPARK, provides a solution for the safety and security
aspects stated above.

More and more tools are available, many are open source, including for
small and recent platforms. Interest in Ada keeps increasing, also in
the open source community, and many exciting projects have been started.

The Ada DevRoom aims to present the facilities offered by the Ada
language (such as for object-oriented, multicore, or embedded
programming) as well as some of the many exciting tools and projects
using Ada.

Language: en

Why does this proposal fit FOSDEM: (see room description) Ada is one of
the languages supported by GCC with a focus on correctness,
maintainability and easy of use. It also comes with a sister language,
SPARK, which focuses on formal proofs and analysis. These topics are
becoming more relevant as time passes. Which is why a lot of new
languages, such as Rust or Zig, have been created and try to improve the
state of software development.

The tooling around Ada is very open and has seen a great deal of
development in the past few years. Developers have also been creating
new programs with it and FOSDEM would be a wonderful choice for them to
present their work. FOSDEM is also used as a meeting opportunity for the
Ada community to come together and share their passion.

Prefered slot: Full day (Saturday)

Submitters affinity to the topic: I first attended FOSDEM with a
presentation in 2021 (A (very) quick overview of libre mechanical software).

I then substituted Dirk Craeynest as the coordinator for the Ada devroom
in FOSDEM 2022 as I had fallen in love with Ada the years prior. It was
my first year as a coordinator and I would like to continue as such. In
FOSDEM 2023, as an Ada DevRoom was not possible, so I helped organise
the Ada stand “It’s time to learn Ada!”, with the help of Tama McGlinn.
This year I will be helped by Dirk Craeynest, who was the coordinator of
the Ada DevRoom in earlier years, and “Streaksu”, a prolific Ada hacker.

Relevant URLS: FOSDEM 2022 - Ada devroom
FOSDEM 2020 - Ada devroom
FOSDEM 2019 - Ada devroom

Special Requirements: If a full day is not possible, half a day could
also be useful for us. But a full day is very much preferred :slightly_smiling_face:

============================================

Best regards,
Fer

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Possibly a mention that Ada is one of the few languages approved by the NSA would help.

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Mention the push by the us government towards wanting people to use safer languages.