WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:18.400 Dear listeners, thank you very much for listening to the Software Freedom Podcast. 00:18.400 --> 00:22.600 The Software Freedom Podcast is brought to you by the Free Software Foundation Europe. 00:22.600 --> 00:26.800 We are a charity that empowers users to control technology. 00:27.120 --> 00:31.760 I'm Bonnie Merring and today we have a dedicated I Love Free Software Day episode. 00:33.040 --> 00:38.240 Each year on the 14th of February we celebrate all the contributors, developers, 00:38.240 --> 00:44.720 maintainers of free software projects. I would love if this would be a regular thing and 00:44.720 --> 00:50.000 if you would not need a dedicated date for it. But so far we have the I Love Free Software Day 00:50.000 --> 00:54.240 and on this day we say thank you so much for your contribution to Software Freedom. 00:54.640 --> 01:00.800 This year on the I Love Free Software Day we highlight the extremely important work 01:00.800 --> 01:06.720 done by countless of maintainers out there. And for this I'm very happy to talk with Lorenz's 01:06.720 --> 01:12.960 K, one of the maintainers from the monitoring platforms. Lorenz, thank you so much for making 01:12.960 --> 01:16.320 the time and thank you so much for joining me in the Software Freedom Podcast. 01:16.320 --> 01:20.480 Thanks for having me. Happy to be here. 01:20.720 --> 01:24.720 Hi you coming to the I Love Free Software Day celebration in Nürnbeck. 01:24.720 --> 01:28.640 I sure am. Yes. Already planted in. 01:29.840 --> 01:35.920 Very happy. Can you very very briefly summarize for me and our listeners what the monitoring 01:35.920 --> 01:46.320 plugins are? Okay briefly might be hard because I have to add some context. So there is a family 01:46.320 --> 01:54.080 of free software systems monitoring software. So the software which helps an administrator to 01:54.880 --> 01:59.680 monitor the actual computers which are in a company institution or whatever. 02:00.320 --> 02:08.400 And we started in 90s with Nagios and they had the idea of putting the actual monitoring. 02:08.400 --> 02:14.560 So the knowledge about how things work into separate little programs which are called 02:14.560 --> 02:20.960 monitoring plugins. So they were separate from the main program and this principle this interface 02:20.960 --> 02:28.320 was kept by forks and follow ups and the monitoring plugins project is a collection of those 02:28.320 --> 02:36.080 monitoring plugins which do the actual monitoring. This is I guess quite a far collection. 02:36.080 --> 02:42.080 So there are a lot of plugins probably in it. Yes I mean the specific programs that this 02:42.080 --> 02:49.600 collection are like maintained by the project itself and they have like 30 thing different plugins 02:49.600 --> 02:57.360 which more or less provide like a basic system functionality test mostly. 02:57.920 --> 03:00.880 All right how did you get involved with the monitoring plugins? 03:00.880 --> 03:08.000 Well I started a shop at a company which provides professional services. 03:08.880 --> 03:16.480 So I encountered the monitoring plugins there and of course at some point I discovered that back 03:16.480 --> 03:22.880 was something I didn't like and well as you do in the good free software world to be a good citizen 03:22.880 --> 03:29.760 you go there you complain in the issue tracker and then nothing happens then you start up with a 03:29.760 --> 03:34.720 pool request and then nothing happens and then you start annoying the maintainers about your pool 03:34.720 --> 03:39.600 request and then they say hey how about you become proud of the project and then you're in. 03:41.280 --> 03:48.560 That's basically it. So you got sucked in. Yes you know you start up with the one thing and then 03:48.560 --> 03:55.040 you already have the code open in the editor and think that that doesn't look good or maybe I would 03:55.040 --> 04:02.000 like to have that differently and you have a second pool request then and after a few of those 04:02.000 --> 04:10.000 somebody approaches you and says hey since you're already here do you want to be part of this? 04:11.040 --> 04:12.720 Do you also try to serve others? 04:14.560 --> 04:19.040 Not successfully. No it did not happen recently. 04:19.920 --> 04:22.960 Okay should I keep fingers crossed that you get more people? 04:22.960 --> 04:26.960 I mean why not? That would might help. 04:27.360 --> 04:37.600 Okay. How did you then like you found us back right and you were like proposing a fix to it 04:37.600 --> 04:44.000 and making sure that everything is updated but what keeps you motivated to continue with this? 04:44.000 --> 04:48.400 Like is there something that you say oh I find this very interesting and I should really 04:48.960 --> 04:57.360 keep doing that. That's I think there's not one easy answer to that. 04:58.160 --> 05:06.880 Partially it's just it's a little bit my project now and I have some strong opinions about 05:08.160 --> 05:14.320 things should work and how the code should look like. This is partially an aesthetic thing, 05:15.280 --> 05:22.400 partially a functionality thing so part of my motivation now is I want to have good things 05:22.400 --> 05:29.280 so things should be proper and well and well done. I mean if I'm correct with the 05:29.280 --> 05:37.440 how how to do it well is another metaphor discussion but now I am okay I've scrolled through 05:37.440 --> 05:43.760 the code and every time I think oh that doesn't look I want to change that and I want to make 05:44.160 --> 05:50.480 better I want to have good software in a way and that keeps me motivated. 05:51.440 --> 05:58.400 Partially it's also I mean this is software that works mostly well but if you have used it 05:58.400 --> 06:03.920 for time you think okay why are we doing this this way? Can we not make it better? 06:03.920 --> 06:12.240 So not only keep it up internally but also improve the functionality, improve the the interfaces 06:12.240 --> 06:20.800 and yeah so it's yeah basically it's I want to have good software in the end and I want to make 06:20.800 --> 06:29.600 good software and somehow this keeps me keeps me at a project still after years and after the 06:29.600 --> 06:35.440 that one bug I found. But is there also a human connection for you? 06:35.440 --> 06:42.960 All right that does not have to exist is it more about technical things that you want to fix? 06:44.080 --> 06:52.800 I mean there's some human connection inside the project but like all the the other people are not 06:53.760 --> 07:00.960 locally here so and we don't have that much communication in itself but of course I have 07:00.960 --> 07:09.120 communication downstream so I I feel now responsible for software which is actually in use 07:09.120 --> 07:17.360 heavily in use and is used by a lot of people so in a way I communicate the downstream if I make 07:18.640 --> 07:27.840 less than optimal error message then people the the action monitoring somewhere works bad because people 07:28.720 --> 07:36.960 can't think or can't recognize what I try to tell them and what what their server is not doing well. 07:38.080 --> 07:50.080 So in a way I'm trying to communicate to users but it's maybe yeah and this is everyone but this 07:50.080 --> 07:56.160 is important for you to keep going this kind of communication or because like with the users it's 07:56.160 --> 08:03.440 more like you communicate to them and I guess they sometimes communicate back to you if something 08:03.440 --> 08:10.560 doesn't work. Some definitely do and that's recently has been actually a very enjoyable 08:11.520 --> 08:19.280 communication and actually that's also yes something that's motivating if you have somebody say hey 08:19.280 --> 08:24.720 I'm a maintainer of a mainstream Linux distribution and this is not working for me 08:25.600 --> 08:34.720 and there's a okay let's debug this and maybe person comes up with a fix and says oh yeah cool 08:34.720 --> 08:41.200 you solved my problem and that's actually really really nice if somebody comes by and says oh cool 08:41.200 --> 08:48.000 that works for me you really you solved the problem I had and that's cool. I can imagine if it's 08:48.000 --> 08:53.680 a bit like you're describing what's behind free software when we talk about community because 08:53.680 --> 09:00.800 this is also this interaction with each other and this exchange of ideas and all and free software 09:01.360 --> 09:06.560 really really grows from those kind of interactions at least as my feeling. 09:08.000 --> 09:18.160 Yes it definitely makes this more fun a lot more fun and I probably wouldn't do it for me 09:19.120 --> 09:27.200 if it wouldn't be like that I mean let's say in a workplace you have if you have find a bug then 09:27.200 --> 09:32.240 you have to contact support and the support has to find a developer and then as you have 09:32.240 --> 09:38.720 play email ping pong for forever and in this project it's just so somebody opens a new issue 09:38.720 --> 09:44.240 there and says hey this is broken and they say okay how is about this and this oh it is a problem 09:44.320 --> 09:51.520 and now I fix it and now I have just in a very smooth and efficient way with 09:51.520 --> 10:00.240 with no hurdles in there helped another human and that's great. Is there something that you 10:00.240 --> 10:05.440 value a lot if there's some interaction you say oh this is how I prefer things because I guess 10:05.440 --> 10:10.480 there is sometimes interaction that is not so nice but I also guess that there's interaction 10:10.480 --> 10:19.680 that keeps you really motivated to be there. I'm lucky in a way that most interaction is actually 10:19.680 --> 10:27.120 at least okay so I could imagine if you have a front end project you get a lot of people who say 10:27.120 --> 10:37.600 that's the wrong blue yeah and at least but yes sometimes I have people I mean mostly people 10:37.600 --> 10:46.320 who opened up the issue previously who said oh great that that really helped and yes that's 10:46.320 --> 10:54.240 these are moments that I which I value. How many of you are in the maintenance group 10:54.960 --> 11:01.440 like how many of them are really active because I obviously checked out the gift page 11:02.000 --> 11:10.080 from monitoring plugins but I have mentioned on the site 153 I guess not 153 people are 11:10.080 --> 11:18.400 actively maintaining this project as far as I know. Not really I think we are about four people 11:18.400 --> 11:28.560 who are more or less active and also active in different parts I would say so in recent years 11:28.560 --> 11:35.600 I have done most of the work in the C part of the project I think we have one or two loose 11:36.720 --> 11:45.200 recurring individuals who also participate there then we have a package maintainer there 11:45.840 --> 11:55.120 which is great because he's like a link to a major Linux distribution and the bugs come to us 11:55.200 --> 12:00.560 and he also managed those those bugs and issues with in the project and then he puts the patches 12:00.560 --> 12:09.120 up so there's a very good good link to the actual user base so to speak and then other people 12:09.120 --> 12:18.160 for pro and for organization but it's very a very loose group I mean it's not like we we do a lot 12:18.160 --> 12:25.920 there so it's a low burning project so to speak but yeah that's I would call this dead core 12:25.920 --> 12:34.000 group in a way. You mentioned there's one from a Linux distribution that is part of this 12:34.960 --> 12:41.840 does now brought me to a to a thread or to a line of communication that I also want to touch 12:42.000 --> 12:49.920 upon is resources because for testing software and all of this kind you need resources to figure out 12:49.920 --> 12:54.640 if this actually works with this project if this also works with that project and you already 12:54.640 --> 13:00.240 mentioned monitoring plugins are widely used on various systems so it's not on a Linux based 13:00.240 --> 13:05.680 systems they are also open the ESD freebies they want ever I'm not mentioning them all but don't 13:06.400 --> 13:11.760 they're all they're all there and they're very important don't get it wrong that means you missed 13:11.760 --> 13:22.080 that one on my toaster which one so you know what I mean like there are quite a lot of systems 13:22.080 --> 13:31.200 operating systems out there all of them equally important but how do you test the software 13:31.200 --> 13:39.920 then running for this like where do the resources come from well effectively not to be quite 13:39.920 --> 13:46.960 honest we were we are testing at different things on a few different Linux distributions 13:48.480 --> 13:56.960 but effectively we are not testing on ourselves on other Unixes 13:57.920 --> 14:05.040 partially because that's a hassle to get it up on GitHub and partially because this 14:05.040 --> 14:12.720 yeah would require resources to set up the testing to create a testing setup in itself find out 14:12.720 --> 14:19.920 how can a compiler how can I introduce tests there and for end-to-end tests what is the appropriate 14:19.920 --> 14:31.440 software there and so this is just something the group and I did not prioritize until now so 14:31.440 --> 14:40.880 sadly we rely on we would say end user testing so I have recently especially we had some very good 14:40.880 --> 14:49.760 contributions from one of the BSDs where people said oh so I said okay we're doing a release candidate 14:49.760 --> 14:55.200 for for a new release and they said okay let's let's put this in testing on our distribution and 14:55.200 --> 15:03.840 see what falls out and they then played the the connection between this BSD and us and that was 15:03.840 --> 15:10.640 very cool but of course it's not ideal so to speak to test it in production but is there something 15:10.640 --> 15:17.520 that others can do and help you with like the people with the BSD did is this something that you 15:17.520 --> 15:22.880 as a group of wish for or is this something that would put more burden on you because then there are 15:22.880 --> 15:30.320 no more issues and people coming to communicate with you and all of that no I would actually appreciate 15:30.320 --> 15:39.280 that if people if there was a good way to sort of like putting up testing pipelines on different 15:39.280 --> 15:46.400 unixes but yeah somebody if somebody would like to do that work that'd be really great 15:49.200 --> 15:55.760 yeah but so far nobody turned up but that would actually be really helpful so if we can test 15:56.400 --> 16:03.360 more and better before we put it in a release then we can smooth out bugs earlier and 16:04.160 --> 16:11.840 also do would not endanger a running system out in the wild so that also would of course be 16:11.840 --> 16:18.480 better to to make good work it's just a thing yeah to to find the time and everything for that 16:18.480 --> 16:25.440 but if people would show up with that and say okay you you have something that improves the 16:25.440 --> 16:33.280 quality here then I would love that that's very nice is there something that you would say 16:33.280 --> 16:39.680 maintain us generally speaking now I know you cannot speak for everybody but from your perspective 16:39.680 --> 16:46.480 is something that people actually need I know it's a hard question yeah it's a hard question and 16:47.040 --> 16:57.920 of course that cannot be a single answer to that I mean that the classic is to say a real 16:57.920 --> 17:08.560 probably financial contribution I mean a lot of infrastructure around the world is free software 17:08.560 --> 17:14.960 I mean probably everybody knows that it's KZD comic certainly forgot the number 17:15.840 --> 17:28.320 I will link it in the show notes thank you so an actual recognition and a free software work 17:28.320 --> 17:38.880 on which role it plays in modern infrastructure would be great here I mean there's some 17:39.680 --> 17:47.280 lonely initiatives I would say let's say an L-net which is great but like why is there not like 17:48.400 --> 17:55.200 a a national software development company where say okay I'll just hire 500 people who do the 17:55.200 --> 18:01.120 open software work in this country and they'll just support them and get them some food 18:01.440 --> 18:12.000 because they're keeping this the infrastructure and that that would be good because yeah actually 18:12.000 --> 18:22.560 some of our infrastructure is based on I find the time on a weekend to fix a bug there so that's 18:23.440 --> 18:32.160 not the most reliable way to have infrastructure apart from that it gets recognition in itself would of 18:32.160 --> 18:40.960 course be good so to have people come to you and say yeah it's great I like that thank you 18:41.760 --> 18:48.480 occasionally that's pretty nice and I guess especially for library maintainers that does not 18:48.480 --> 18:55.760 happen often if you're if you're the maintainer of lip foo nobody comes up to you and says hey I 18:55.760 --> 19:02.240 last that I have that in 300 programs on my computer running currently that's great work you did 19:02.240 --> 19:09.360 there this is a short break for our own cause thank you for listening to the software freedom 19:09.360 --> 19:16.000 podcast working for software freedom and producing podcasts costs money please consider 19:16.400 --> 19:21.600 supporting us with a donation on the fsfe.org slash donate and then the show notes 19:24.400 --> 19:31.440 I mean it would be nice of course just as on a human basis yeah so to feel seen you mean yes 19:32.400 --> 19:40.080 and so a convoyage meant into receiving to have recognition for that work but I guess the the 19:40.080 --> 19:48.960 extra physical financial aspect should not be you should also be there absolutely I can absolutely 19:48.960 --> 19:56.800 agree on that but to get the world up is there a project that you really like and would like to say 19:56.800 --> 20:04.800 thank you to I thought about this for for long and then it should be because of course this is 20:05.520 --> 20:13.440 very tricky because it's such a huge number of of projects I actually just have on my computer 20:15.760 --> 20:23.520 so I thought what would be one that actually does not get noticed very often so and I thought 20:23.520 --> 20:31.520 about a npd the music player demon which is a program to just play music and organize a playlist 20:31.520 --> 20:39.520 and a music library and it has been working on my systems for 15 years and the only trouble I had 20:39.520 --> 20:45.120 when I tried to configure the funny things and that plays music for me and it's great 20:45.840 --> 20:53.360 oh that's very cute no thank you very much last but not least what can the community do to help you 20:54.240 --> 21:03.520 I guess monitoring plugins and maintaining the maintenance of monitoring plugins of course 21:04.800 --> 21:12.480 cold contributions are always welcome issues especially notices about how their things are 21:12.480 --> 21:22.560 breaking or ideas about the improvement are welcome and although both of those create more right 21:24.000 --> 21:31.120 so things that would help in general I mean of course if people want to contribute long time 21:31.120 --> 21:40.480 and engage the project itself that would be great but of course a difficult thing but apart from 21:40.560 --> 21:48.480 that I would welcome things like static analysis and like maybe coding guidelines something they can 21:48.480 --> 21:57.840 automate which like reduces error rates my C is probably not the best C seen anywhere but so if 21:57.840 --> 22:03.760 people can come up with something that says me oh no that blind is broken because you did something 22:03.760 --> 22:10.240 wrong there and we can automate that or if people can actually build more test pipelines and 22:10.640 --> 22:21.120 build more test cases or documentation which is on my to-do list but you know so all of those 22:21.120 --> 22:29.200 things would be welcome and valued and I would be happy if people would come by and at least say 22:29.200 --> 22:35.280 hello in the IFC chat will also be nice I'm a link to IFC chat and I show lots then I just 22:35.280 --> 22:40.160 keep thinking about the documentation part because you know we have this program in competition for 22:40.160 --> 22:46.160 teenagers you've actually for freedom and in it we have eight criteria for eventually for the 22:46.160 --> 22:52.080 sure to evaluate the projects that are submitted and one of this criteria is documentation 22:55.120 --> 23:02.480 that's very appropriate I think yeah I guess so too anyway thank you very much Lorenzce for 23:02.480 --> 23:08.880 the time thank you so much for doing this with me and giving me a glamp and glimpse or an inside 23:09.600 --> 23:15.200 to say this in a better way of how maintaining works and what acts actually needed there thank you 23:15.200 --> 23:22.320 very much thank you for having me this was the software freedom podcast if you like this episode 23:22.320 --> 23:28.400 please recommend it to your friends and rated they tune for more inspiring conversations that 23:28.400 --> 23:34.160 explore the importance of software freedom and its impact on our digital lives I wish you all 23:34.160 --> 23:39.120 a very pleasant I love free software day there are some events that will be running throughout 23:39.120 --> 23:48.000 Europe so check out I love of s dot org and see if there's one happening near you and yes thank 23:48.000 --> 23:52.560 you so much for listening this podcast is presented to you by the free software foundation europe 23:52.560 --> 23:58.800 there are a charity that works on promoting software freedom if you like our book please consider 23:58.880 --> 24:05.680 supporting us with a donation you find more information under fsfe.org/donate thank you 24:05.680 --> 24:08.800 so much until the next episode bye bye