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Ariadne Conill 🐰

One of my larger complaints about Linux Foundation events is that they are very much targeted at corporations with large budgets to send people to conferences.

For example, as someone who has mostly been an indie OSS maintainer over their career, I would love to go to Open Source Summit and meet up with people to discuss what problems they are having with the software I maintain and how we can collaborate on resolving those problems.

But my choices are to register as a "hobbyist" (a frankly demeaning thing to call an indie maintainer) at $249, which requires me to go ask them for a discount code (also frankly demeaning), or register at the full $949 rate, or maybe I could get the "small business" discount code which brings it down to *only* $500. Man, what a favor, huh?

I understand that putting on these events is very costly, but when indie OSS maintainers are given the option of paying nearly $1000 or having to go ask someone for a "hobbyist" discount code, it seems very disrespectful to the maintainers who are building the actual software that this summit is about.

Do you really think the guy in Nebraska who is holding up all modern digital infrastructure in his spare time has the money to spend $949 to go to a conference? For all the talking we do about building inclusive conferences, this has to include *access* for indie maintainers.

15 April at 3:17 | Open on social.treehouse.systems
47 comments
JoYo :clippy:

@ariadne defcon is like $500 this year. conferences are super expensive unless they make deals with hotels.

shop.defcon.org/products/def-c

15 April at 3:19 | Open on hackers.town
:flan_reaper: - On Hiatus

@JoYo

Yikes.

That's getting into maybe I'll just lobby-con it range.

@ariadne

15 April at 3:32 | Open on hackers.town
The Wrew

@JoYo @ariadne what this tells me is that these cons have gotten too big, and we need to start over with something new, small, and affordable to all.

Regarding defcon, since when have we as hackers been beholden to things that make us spend obscene amounts of money to spend time with our brethren?

15 April at 3:40 | Open on hackers.town
fiercest lasagna on the seven seas!

@Wrewdison @JoYo @ariadne blueteamcon is like $200 for a non-student, $50 for a student

I forgot how much circle city con or pancakes con is, or bsides

I definitely separate out "conferences work pays for" like legal/privacy/vendor ones, and "conferences made by a nice community"

If it's so pricy I couldn't do it on my old dishwasher wages, you're not in the second category

15 April at 3:58 | Open on tech.lgbt
The Doctor

@risottobias @Wrewdison @JoYo @ariadne B-Sides tends to be relatively cheap - less than $100us. Pancakescon is free and online.

15 April at 4:12 | Open on hackers.town
Aphrodite ☑️ :boost_ok:

@risottobias @Wrewdison @JoYo @ariadne

It’s why I like hacker camps tbh over these big events, but even they are getting super spendy esp when one is stretching every dollar until it screams.

Toorcamp is $375 per person, not counting getting to and from Orcas.

Chaos Camp last year was €380, Dutch Camp next year likely will be similar, and that excludes getting to and from the sites.

15 April at 4:16 | Open on chaos.social
Phillip :unverified:
Ryo Kimball

@Wrewdison @JoYo @ariadne I've been hosting a local (Memphis TN) monthly Meetup, wouldn't call it a convention but it's been fun getting local hackers together and just talking shop or whatever.

15 April at 4:17 | Open on d3f4ult.space
Ariadne Conill 🐰

@JoYo $500 to go to DEFCON is still more value for money than any LF conference for an indie maintainer

15 April at 3:49 | Open on social.treehouse.systems
The Doctor

@JoYo @ariadne And good luck actually getting into anything there.

15 April at 4:07 | Open on hackers.town
Powersource

@JoYo @ariadne no they're not. We have a regular week-long one for 20€, including food. 500$ only ensures complete homogeneity, and profits.

16 April at 14:25 | Open on sunbeam.city
Josh Conway :donor:

@ariadne
To be fair, that's why we see FLOSS browser plugins be sold on the sly to a really garbage company....

The sole maintainer is doing work for free, and usually abused by a few self-entitled assholes who make the maintainer question their existence.

And when someone comes by and offers $100k for full control? I mean, yeah?

(But yeah, the "Linux Foundation" is a scammy business front. Seriously, when your Linux membership is Oracle and Microsoft, you have a front.)

@ariadne
To be fair, that's why we see FLOSS browser plugins be sold on the sly to a really garbage company....

The sole maintainer is doing work for free, and usually abused by a few self-entitled assholes who make the maintainer question their existence.

And when someone comes by and offers $100k for full control? I mean, yeah?

15 April at 3:24 | Open on infosec.exchange
Emme Ci 🍉

@crankylinuxuser @ariadne speaking of browser plugins, what do you think could be done to prevent this kind of scam other than Mozilla, Google and maybe gitlab to disallow reselling of personal accounts and keys?

15 April at 5:09 | Open on freeradical.zone
adb

@ariadne I really miss the Ottawa Linux Symposium. That was a lot more for developers and implementers from all the odd corners of the Linux ecosystem.

As far as I can tell the Linux Foundation events are for corporate-Linux people to talk to each other and really aren't for the rest of us.

15 April at 3:32 | Open on infosec.exchange
Raven667

@ariadne there is probably a bit of an expectation mismatch as well as LF is primarily an industry consortium representing/coordinating the interests of its corporate members. I have no problem with LF charging $1k to Samsung, MS or Google staff developers. Take whatever rate makes sense to you, whatever they label the SKU they dont have feelings about it, they're a soulless company 😉

15 April at 3:35 | Open on hachyderm.io
Ariadne Conill 🐰

@raven667 but that's the thing. i'm not a hobbyist, i am an indie maintainer trying to bootstrap a business.

why should i have to go grovel for a $249 discount code

15 April at 3:51 | Open on social.treehouse.systems
Jon

Yeah really. It's so disrespectful! Great post, @ariadne, I completely agree. @raven667

15 April at 4:17 | Open on indieweb.social
sͧb̴ͫƸ̴gͬᵉ

@ariadne @raven667 But a bit tounge-in-cheek, if this is the worst pridebreaking groveling you have to do to save your business money, you should count yourself a very lucky entrepeneur indeed… 😅

15 April at 4:20 | Open on infosec.exchange
Morten Linderud

@raven667 @ariadne

They also do the maintainer stuff like Linux Plumber's though.

15 April at 6:52 | Open on chaos.social
The Doctor

@ariadne I've been to OSS a few times. The only reason I went was because work paid for it. There is a vanishingly small chance that anyone whom you would want to talk to about your work would be there.

You would have far more success at HOPE.

15 April at 4:06 | Open on hackers.town
Taran Rampersad

@ariadne yeah, I gave up on the foundation about a decade ago for similar reasons. Talking the talk, stumbling the walk.

15 April at 4:40 | Open on mastodon.social
Anders Eknert

@ariadne KubeHuddle is a good community alternative to KubeCon kubehuddle.com/

I’m not sure if there’s anything similar for open source summit, but I’d love to see it!

@david do you know?

15 April at 4:58 | Open on hachyderm.io
Tero Hänninen

@ariadne Yeah, that's a huge problem. I organize a small time local IT-sec con and we're fighting to keep tickets in the humane price range.We haven't inflation adjusted prices and sell student tickets with a 50% loss but they still climb to 1500 SEK ($150) which is a lot if you're a full time student. It sucks.

15 April at 5:31 | Open on ohai.social
Don Marti

@0xtero @ariadne

Southern California #Linux Expo was $85 this year for 11 tracks over 4 days, and generally features a lot of the same speakers as the more expensive conferences. SCALE gets corporate devops attendees along with lower-budget projects, companies, students, and other people

web.archive.org/web/2024021121

15 April at 5:51 | Open on federate.social
LOLoud

@ariadne omg, is this s**t (aka "user events" or whatnot) still going on?

Lordy, that was a corporate-sponsored grift way back in the 1980's! They "reformed" by moving the events from holiday destinations (e.g. Hawaii) to actual business-related sites (e.g. Oklahoma), but a grift is a grift and the scenery was secondary.

I dunno, maybe this particular event has a better history of pure intentions?

15 April at 5:38 | Open on mastodon.online
Bálint Szilakszi

@ariadne

This is FOSDEM in Europe essentially (more towards independent maintainers than large corps) ( i realize this is not helpful advice if you’re looking for a conf in the US)

15 April at 5:44 | Open on x0r.be
Phyxis

@ariadne "I understand that putting on these events is very costly, but when indie OSS maintainers are given the option of paying nearly $1000 or having to go ask someone for a "hobbyist" discount code, it seems very disrespectful to the maintainers who are building the actual software that this summit is about."

So, is it the residual cost out of pocket, or the terminology under which those discounts are granted, which you take-issue with? I.e., if LF went with more respectful wording, would the ~75% discount off commercial-face-pricing be acceptable?

Having spent a bit of time on the Con Exec side of things (entirely unrelated convention), they're stupefyingly expensive to run, if in-person at a commercial facility. Someone has to cover the costs, either by declaring sponsorships (overt cost-shifting), or categorization (with hidden cost-shifting).

@ariadne "I understand that putting on these events is very costly, but when indie OSS maintainers are given the option of paying nearly $1000 or having to go ask someone for a "hobbyist" discount code, it seems very disrespectful to the maintainers who are building the actual software that this summit is about."

15 April at 6:01 | Open on pounced-on.me
Ariadne Conill 🐰

@Phyxis it is three things:

1. the cost for non-corporate attendees being $949 by default, especially when many corporate attendees have significantly discounted tickets because their corporate employer is a sponsor of LF
2. if you are an indie OSS maintainer, then you can in theory get a discount code as a “hobbyist” if you go and ask for one, this is demeaning to OSS maintainers
3. referring to private individuals who are involved in open source as maintainers as “hobbyists” is also just directly insulting

but hey, this is the same organization who issued a policy that everyone has to have a badge with their government ID name on it during COVID because it had to match their health records, despite this being harmful to transgender people and others who go by names other than their government one.

@Phyxis it is three things:

1. the cost for non-corporate attendees being $949 by default, especially when many corporate attendees have significantly discounted tickets because their corporate employer is a sponsor of LF
2. if you are an indie OSS maintainer, then you can in theory get a discount code as a “hobbyist” if you go and ask for one, this is demeaning to OSS maintainers
3. referring to private individuals who are involved in open source as maintainers as “hobbyists” is also just directly insulting

15 April at 8:18 | Open on social.treehouse.systems
coldclimate

@ariadne wow, that is shocking. The language is astoundingly patronising.

15 April at 6:16 | Open on hachyderm.io
fosdembsd

@ariadne You should definitely try BSD conferences. The 31 May - 01 June 2024 takes place the BSDCan in Otawa, and we have grants from the FreeBSD Foundation & cookies.

15 April at 6:20 | Open on mastodon.bsd.cafe
SarahBurnout🍥

@ariadne how much of that fee goes toward their insurance fees for the event is what i am curious about. insurance fees are just becoming astronomical lately, forcing venues to raise their fees, or just cancel or shut down altogether.

15 April at 6:22 | Open on mas.to
FiveSeventeen

@ariadne

I nearly had to sign up for a course recently, but saved myself at the last moment.

Four hundred and thirty euro.

An hour.

The course is five hours long....

#life #training #costs

15 April at 6:27 | Open on bahn.social
Enno T. Boland

@ariadne That's _exactly_ my impression about the latest KubeCon event.

15 April at 6:33 | Open on chaos.social
jmelesky

@ariadne Open Source Bridge was an attempt to have a conference that was more community-oriented. It lasted about a decade, but never really managed to get bigger than a regional conference. The last one, in 2018, had registration on a sliding scale: $10-100, or you could register for $250 and become a sponsor. It relied a great deal on volunteer labor, though, which is one of the reasons it’s no longer around – organizer burnout is just as destructive as maintainer burnout :blobsad:

15 April at 6:38 | Open on tinylad.social
Programmer 832-529 🍅

@ariadne
Our local bsides is about 130 usd
Debconf is about 0/200/500

I'd say OSS is not that sort of conference you're talking about but more of a focus of people using it in their day job.

It's on YouTube though.

15 April at 7:06 | Open on social.dropbear.xyz
Jérôme Petazzoni

@ariadne I don't know if this is solvable, because in addition to the conference ticket, there is travel and hosting. Local conferences do better on these metrics but I feel like we're hitting a contradiction in terms, i.e. gathering contributors from all over the globe to a central place so they can collaborate in person - that's not a local event 😅

On top of all that, personally I think global conferences the way we do them today are an unsustainable practice. Idk if they can be fixed :/

15 April at 8:13 | Open on hachyderm.io
Ariadne Conill 🐰

@jpetazzo lodging and travel are more affordable when the ticket isn’t nearly 1000 USD

15 April at 8:19 | Open on social.treehouse.systems
Jérôme Petazzoni

@ariadne as you said - the ticket isn't 1000 USD, it's more like 300. Yes it's annoying to have to jump thru hoops to get that price - although IME this hasn't been hard. What takes (again, IME) more spoons and effort is the other hoops (take train vs plane for environmental responsibility; share a room with a friend or with a stranger, or stay farther from the venue, to drive costs down, etc.) I agree that the LF can and should do better :) I'm just surprised that it's your larger complaint :)

15 April at 8:35 | Open on hachyderm.io
Ariadne Conill 🐰

@jpetazzo being a native seattlite, i do not need to travel anywhere or get a hotel room so the ticket is the only decision point in this particular case

15 April at 8:37 | Open on social.treehouse.systems
Jérôme Petazzoni

@ariadne ah, that sucks. I mean, it's awesome that you're a local (that's super lucky of you!), and they have scholarships for that (typically giving you a free ticket if you're an OSS maintainer and can cover your other expenses), but it's unfortunate because the deadline to apply for that scholarship has passed 😢

15 April at 8:51 | Open on hachyderm.io
Ariadne Conill 🐰

@jpetazzo yeah but all of this is silly. there shouldn’t be an application period, there should be “present your OSS maintainership credential of choice, get reduced ticket price immediately”

does not have to be zero, just not $949.

15 April at 8:53 | Open on social.treehouse.systems
Frederic

@ariadne Attended KubeCon EU a few years back, but it felt more like a BigCorp sales event for other BigCorps, but with the occasional food truck and swag.

Not really targeted for an OSS mindset or for maintainers to exchange.

15 April at 8:22 | Open on chaos.social
mid_kid

@ariadne I've always considered FOSDEM the hobbyist free software summit (and even then it's increasingly more inhabited by corporate folks)

15 April at 8:49 | Open on fosstodon.org
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