===================================================== Genode Labs Newsletter - December 2011 / January 2012 ===================================================== Content 1. The liberation of Genode's development process 2. Roadmap for the year 2012 3. Genode as FOSDEM 2012 1. Liberating the Genode development process -------------------------------------------- For the past three years, we conducted the development of Genode mostly inside Genode Labs and released the results of our work in the form of source code and documentation at regular intervals. But we have realized that in order to let Genode change the world, it needs more than our company. It needs a thriving community of users and developers. Hence, we came to the realization that liberating the development process towards an open community is our way to go. The transition started off with a reflection on our current situation posted on our mailing list: http://genode.org/news/steps-towards-an-open-development-process During December and January, we have migrated the project and our work flows to GitHub. We first started to embrace GitHub's issue tracker for the management of working topics: http://github.com/genodelabs/genode/issues The most significant step was leaving our Genode-Labs-internal code repositories behind and starting a completely public Git repository instead: https://github.com/genodelabs With the code repository going public, the way is cleared to opening up design discussions as well. Instead of having such discussions internally at Genode Labs, we will increasingly take them to our mailing list. With this new way of development, we hope to make the project much more approachable for people who want to get involved and let Genode reach far out beyond the reach of our little company. 2. Roadmap for the year 2012 ---------------------------- We think that there is no better way to show our confidence in the maturity and flexibility of the framework than to actually use it for our personal computing needs. Furthermore, we hope that this undertaking will draw our attention to those parts of the framework that are possibly still underdeveloped for real-world use. So we can focus on the right things. For planning the roadmap, we first took an inventory of our actual computing needs. The result was a list of applications and features that we need to pursue our work. We then categorized the list into base topics. Each of the four releases planned for 2012 will be focused on a different base topic. The roadmap discussion is summarized at: http://genode.org/about/road-map The February release will be focused on Unix productivity tools that do not rely on networking. The May release will add networking-based applications and a renewed device-driver infrastructure. In August, it is time for addressing the user interface and multi-processor support. The November release will enhance the platform support for our actual development hardware and introduce cryptography. 3. Genode as FOSDEM 2012 ------------------------ In the last newsletter, we advertised on Genode's presence at FOSDEM 2012. http://fosdem.org/2012 In the meanwhile, the schedule of presentations at the microkernel developer room on Sunday (5th of February) had been finalized. We are happy that our project will have the chance to contribute to three presentation slots. Norman Feske will give an introductory talk about our project, presenting the big picture of Genode and the direction where it is heading. Stefan Kalkowski will give an experience report about the use of many different kernels as Genode's base platforms. Finally, Christian Helmuth will participate in a panel discussion. The complete schedule is as follows: Welcome! or Why do we meet here today Jakub Jermar 09:00 Introduction to the NOVA kernel API Julian Stecklina 09:30 Introduction of the Genode OS Framework Norman Feske 10:10 Introduction to HelenOS Jakub Jermář 11:10 The microkernel overhead Martin Děcký 13:00 The agony of choice Stefan Kalkowski 14:10 Dive into HelenOS Device Drivers Jiří Svoboda 15:05 Panel discussion 16:00 The microkernel developer room will be hosted in room K.3.201. If you have the chance to attend FOSDEM, we'd be pleased to meet you there! About the newsletter -------------------- If you have friends or colleagues who might be interested in our projects, we would appreciate you to forward this email. If you received this newsletter as a forwarded email, you may subscribe to the newsletter here: http://genode-labs.com/newsletter In the case of receiving this newsletter unintended, you can cancel your subscription at any time by replying to this email with the subject set to "unsubscribe". Best regards -- Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske Genode Labs http://www.genode-labs.com · http://genode.org Genode Labs GmbH · Amtsgericht Dresden · HRB 28424 · Sitz Dresden Geschäftsführer: Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske, Christian Helmuth
