Thank YOU for open source 🧡

Any sensible person knows that when you have a valuable idea or unique knowledge, it’s only logical to keep that competitive edge to yourself and leverage it for maximum personal advantage. But the open source community missed the memo – we share our innovations and expertise with everyone, often for free. And maybe there is method in our madness. Maybe we’ve all realized that while there’s logic in self-interest, there’s wisdom in putting us over me. 🧠

It’s the season for giving thanks, and this year we’d like to express our gratitude to everyone who shares their time, effort, and expertise with the whole world in the form of open source.

Nothing gets us in the Thanksgiving spirit quite so much as Ubuntu Summit. Seeing so many likeminded people come together to share their enthusiasm, ideas, and projects really drives home the fundamental generosity inherent in open source. This year’s Ubuntu Summit was the biggest yet, packed with fascinating talks, workshops, and booths. For those of you who couldn’t make it, we wanted to take this opportunity to give you a taste of the event and shine a spotlight on some of the moments that really gave us the warm fuzzies. 🧤

Thank you for new perspectives 🔭

Ubuntu Summit is Canonical’s annual, community-focused event designed for everyone passionate about open source software and Ubuntu. It brings together experts, builders and engineers to showcase the latest innovations from across the open source ecosystem. We hold Ubuntu Summit in a different part of the world each year, and this October we were in The Hague, Netherlands. We don’t keep moving the Summit just because we love having an excuse to travel and explore new cities – though that’s certainly a bonus – but rather, it’s a reflection of the community that the event celebrates. Open source is global. It’s for everyone, everywhere. 🌎

That’s a heartwarming sentiment, isn’t it? Well, let’s not be patting ourselves on the back just yet. While it’s true that anyone with a computer and an internet connection can access open source software, we’re still a ways off global parity when it comes to community involvement and the ability to contribute to software development. 

One of the most eye-opening sessions at Ubuntu Summit was Ngazetungue Muheue ’s talk on open source in Africa. As a software engineer and Python Africa Community Leader, Ngazetungue shared how open source is transforming Africa’s tech scene, and how interaction with the open source ecosystem differs in Africa compared to the West. 

Two key challenges that Ngazetungue highlighted were the lack of support for open source communities in Africa, and the lack of awareness on how to contribute to open source projects rather than simply consuming the software. Closing these gaps is essential to fulfilling the promise of open source, so we’ll echo Ngazetungue’s call to action: attend open source events in Africa, invite fellow enthusiasts from African countries to participate in your projects, and consider mentoring contributors from across the African continent in your open source communities.

Thank you for getting ‘em while they’re young 🏫

Extending the reach of open source isn’t only a matter of geography, it’s also about empowering new generations. In his session, Zach Latta , Founder of Hack Club, explained how his nonprofit network helps high school students get into coding and build meaningful friendships based on a shared passion.

The Hack Club philosophy is that the best way to learn how to code is by building open source projects. Zack shared a selection of the incredible things that have been created this year by Hack Club members as young as 14, including a UAV drone, a scratch-built operating system, and a terminal website. Zack was also joined by 17-year-old Hack Club member Cheru, who introduced us to Sprig – a game console that’s also a hardware development kit. Any teenager can build and publish an original game for Sprig, and Hack Club will send them a free Sprig device.

Last but not least, Zack told us about the Boreal Express, one of the hackathons organized by teenagers for teenagers. This event was intended to be an 8-day challenge to build projects designed to help the environment while on a train journey across Canada, however the journey was cut short due to intense forest fires. Seeing the effects of climate change first hand only drove the students to work harder. They spent 72 hours hacking together on the train while parked at Vancouver Station, and created incredible projects like a program to predict the potential impact of future forest fires. 🛤️

Thank you for smart toilets, submarines, and RISC-V 💡

Speaking of trains, let’s talk toilets. Train toilets. Teenagers aren’t the only ones innovating, and speakers at Ubuntu Summit shared a host of new projects and technologies – including Akarshan Kapoor , who spoke about the Pump Monitor device used by Deutsche Bahn.

Akarshan’s session was a great opportunity to see open source IoT solutions solving a real-world problem. Whereas Deutsche Bahn previously relied on analog sensors and manual processes for its wastewater monitoring system, the new Pump Monitor IoT device uses a real-time operating system, Zephyr RTOS, to deliver real-time insight. The device makes the entire system more efficient, preventing delays and enabling proactive issue detection and maintenance.

If you’re curious to learn more about real-time operating systems, and the differences between RTOS and real-time Linux, our recent whitepaper has you covered.

From taking water out of vehicles, to taking vehicles into water – Ubuntu Summit even featured a session on submarines. Juanmi Taboada , a Summit veteran who also presented at our event in 2023, returned this year to deliver a technical workshop on how to assemble a submarine using open source software, with a step-by-step live demonstration.

Live demos are one of our favorite parts of Ubuntu Summit, and it’s especially exciting when the presenter is racing against the clock. At Canonical, we’re committed to enabling Ubuntu on RISC-V platforms, so we couldn’t wait to call out the lightning talk from Nirav Patel , Founder and CEO of Framework. In just 5 minutes, Nirav swapped the architecture of a laptop from x86 to RISC-V live on stage! 🪛✨

Thank you for so much more 👏

These highlights barely scratch the surface of all the amazing sessions and workshops that took place at Ubuntu Summit 2024, not to mention the great conversations that were happening all throughout the weekend. This was the first Summit that featured community-focused exhibition booths – 26 in total – which gave attendees the chance to network with hardware companies like System76 , device manufacturers like Husarion , and representatives from Microsoft , Intel Corporation , OpenSearch Project and many others.

Much as we’d like to showcase everything, this is supposed to be a newsletter, not a whitepaper. But if you’re keen to see more, you can watch the sessions for yourself over on Youtube.

What are you grateful for in open source this year? Let us know in the comments!

All that’s left to say is thank you for coming, thank you for contributing, and thank you for open source!

This edition is contributed by Freyja Cooper, a content specialist at Canonical.

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