Guest from Nexedi ( https://www.nexedi.com ): Jean-Paul Smets (JPS), CEO of Nexedi

Prospering with 100% OpenSource software 

INTRODUCTION

Nexedi is the largest publisher of Free Software in Europe (10 software, 10 millions line of code). It is also a living proof that Enterprise Free Software initial development can be self-financed without venture capital and can be sustained more than 15 years without a large community, as Gartner had pointed out back in 2009.

The talk will be around the great engineering challenges at Nexedi, their design choices, their technology stack, development philosophy, tools they use and development methodology with a particular focus on today's and medium term challenges.

The purpose of the talk is to let the co-learner gain insights in a real development environment. This will hopefully guide building their profile with skillsets useful to successful engineering teams in China.

The talk from the speaker will be for software developers and aspiring developers. We've specifically asked the speaker to not have a slidedeck and answer questions about his engineering team using actual code examples and infrastructure details. Audience is warned that they might expect to see some warts and imperfections as we look behind the curtain of a real engineering team.

SCHEDULE 

• 11:00 Check in  
• 11:30 Talk  
• 12:30 Lunch  
• 13:30 Workshop  
• 16:00 Check out

TICKETS

• talk+ lunch+workshop 220 RMB  (at the door)  
• talk+ lunch+workshop 180 RMB  (online)  
• talk+lunch 120 RMB  (at the door)  
• talk+lunch 100 RMB  (online)  
• talk+lunch+workshop 50 RMB  (discount for members) 

Join the conversation on WeChat

AGENDA

The agenda is structured as a journey across a typical working day of Nexedian engineer.

• Meet NayuOS:  most Nexedians now use NayuOS, a derivative of Chromium OS for using Chromebooks without Google proprietary software and services (including in China). JPS will show a tour of the unique features of NayuOS (nodejs, python, cryptography) compared to ChromiumOS, use the developer console and show one can “survive” without login. Previously, Nexedi was using only traditional GNU/LInux distros (Mandriva, Debian, SuSE, Fedora, Arch, etc). Some people were using MacOS at home (anything not Free is forbidden in Nexedi) It was thus a big change to abandon those environments. JPS will explain why migrating everyone in Nexedi to “Web Only” was an important step for our engineering strategy.

• Meet Grandenet:  JPS will then connect to Grandenet using a simple command line. He will show (with ifconfig ps and ip commands) how grandenet creates a random mesh network of latency optimized routes that solve all Internet problems one can face, especially in China (but not only).

• Meet SlapOS: with a reliable IPv6 meshnet, he will access his developer workspace. Nexedi owns about 150 servers in 35 sites all over the world. All servers are managed by a system called “SlapOS” that acts as a decentralized cloud operating system. It could also be called nowadays a “hyperconverged OS”. All computers and virtual machines in Nexedi, no matter whether they are baremetal servers, virtual machines or connected things, are operated as if they were a single computer spanning all over the world. Nexedi uses SlapOS to automate any tasks related to the build, deployment of services, configuration, monitoring, disaster recovery. In Nexedi, “everything is service”: database, ERP system, web IDE, VM manager, etc. Developers usually do their tasks on a Web IDE called “Web Runner”. Sometimes they use a VM.

• Meet Webrunner: JPS will then open his personal development Webrunner environment and edit some code online. He will show one example of Webrunner to run ERP5 and another example to run scikit-learn. The Webrunner has two parts: one to edit the code (based on ACE) and another to edit the build script (based on buildout technology). JPS will add some modules to the scikit-learn environment.

• Meet Wendelin.core: he will then run a tutorial to demonstrate how to manage Big Data in python, namely ndarrays which size can be bigger than the size of RAM and which can be shared on a cluster of computers.

• Meet officejs.com: he will then turn off network and write some text in OfficeJS, an HTML5 office suite than runs offline and can synchronize with any backend.

• Meet ERP5: the document written offiline with then synchronize to ERP5 backend where Nexedi has all its corporate data.

This ends the journey across the different tools that define Nexedi’s engineering environment.

FOLLOW UP HANDS ON WORKSHOP: “Grandenet”

Goal: install resilient IPv6 connectivity into a GNU/Linux server and access it through IPv4 reverse proxy 

Applications: home server, resilient ERP server hosting, resilient web site hosting, resilient data collection network for IoT, etc.

Prerequisites: a GNU/Linux host  (baremetal or VM) - no public IPv4 needed

• Go to http://www.grandenet.cn/ 
• Subscribe: http://www.grandenet.cn/en/documentation/user/grandenet-User.Documentation/user-How.To.Subscribe   
• Request ADN: http://www.grandenet.cn/en/documentation/user/grandenet-User.Documentation/user-How.To.Request.ADN

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Jean-Paul Smets is the founder and CEO of Nexedi. Nexedi is the largest European publisher of Open Source / Free Software, Nexedi's portfolio includes ERP5 (ERP, CRM, ECM, e-business), Wendelin (big data, out-of-core machine learning), SlapOS (decentralized cloud, hyperconvergent OS), re6st (resilient software defined mesh network). OfficeJS (offline web office suite), NEO (distributed transactional NoSQL database), NayuOS (secure desktop OS), JIO (offline HTML5 middleware), etc. Nexedi code base totals today more than 10 million lines.

JPS Blog on CTOCIO:  http://www.ctocio.com//author/jean-paul-smets

ABOUT THE ORGANIZER

CoderBunker is a software hackerspace. Our community support people in being successful with software engineering.

• Discover:  join our workshops, tech talk, hackathon and meet passionate talents. 
• Learn: join co-learning continuous bootcamp to develop professional engineering skills from scratch. 
• Grow: your portfolio by collaborating on open source project. 
• Work: join our community of freelancers and consultant 
• Launch: your startup and join our incubator.

Want to know more event? Follow us on WeChat