Episode: 4639
Title: NLUUG Spring Conference 2026
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4639/hpr4639.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:15:41 (official HPR transcript)

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4639, for 2026-05-14
Today's show is entitled, "NLUUG Spring Conference 2026"
The host is Ken Fallon and the duration is 00:35:29
The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "Ken interviews Ronny Lam, Nico Rikken, and Geert-Jan Meewisse"
Hi, everybody. My name is Ken Fallon, and you're listening to another episode of Acro Public Radio.
Today, I want to bring you some recordings from the NL UUG, which is an NL Unix User Group
Spring Conference, 2026. From the website, it is an organization of professional open source
open standard users in the Netherlands. You can follow them on at NL UUG,
NL UUG.Social on MasterDone. And I've been following them for some time,
and we can particularly interested in this festival, because a name familiar to you all, Mr.
Urun Baton, from HPR fame, was going to give a talk there, I'm getting started with CICD on
for Geoft, and he has assured me that that will be coming out as a show. So obviously, I can't attend
venue without my genetic takeout, the microphone thing goes into play, and we're able to
say some interviews. First, you're going to hear Rally Lam from the NL UUG Unix User Group
itself, and then a talk from Nico Ricken about free software foundation, Europe, and then
Churchill, and maybe talking about the coalition for fair digital education.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallen, and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Today, I've taken off some time, and I've made my way down to Utrecht, to the NL UUG Group.
And I'm talking to you, Urun, I know I'm not talking to you, go away, go away, Urun is a one of the
HPR hosts, so he can actually do this interview, but I'm actually talking to you.
Yeah, I'm already 24th cast, I mean, yeah. I'm actually talking to Rally Lam, and
what is your role here in the organization? I'm currently in the boards of the NLUG,
and this is my eight year in the boards, and before that, I have done almost eight years,
I think, of programming commission. Okay, so for people outside the Netherlands, I'm guessing
the NL UUG is the Netherlands Unix User Group. It is indeed, yes, but nowadays it's more like
open source, open systems, open standards, but we didn't want to change the name, because the
name is so old, the NL UUG, and Luke, we say in a Glee English, is founded in 1984, and so yeah,
you don't want to change the brand name. But something, sorry, the most important question that I
have for you right now is, why is it the Netherlands brokers? I don't know, I mean,
I was at their time, I was 12 years old, so, so, this has been good on for a while, so what do you do?
What do we do? So, from the beginning, we started sharing knowledge about Unix,
about networking, and since, like, in the 90s, we have a conference twice a year where we have
a lot of talks, interesting talks about these topics, and yeah, we still do that, and yeah,
we are currently at one of those. It's the range of talks have been very interesting,
you run as a very good one, I'll sneak in there, because it's more than likely to be hosted
here in HGAR, but it's nice, actually, I can't believe it, that I've been in the Netherlands so long,
and didn't come to one of these before, it's a bit silly, but you can thank your master down the
count for that, because I don't know, why am I not a member of the organization, why am I not
coming here? So, what sort of talks were available? To be honest, to be really honest, I mean
the boards, and it's a stretcher, and I have been so busy doing that, that I haven't really
looked into the program, to be honest, if you would answer that anything else, you are doing
your job properly, so, um, and what do you see, what's the benefits for somebody being a member of
the organization? Yeah, I mean, the benefit is knowledge, getting new information, what's going on,
but also seeing old friends, it's a big networking event of, yeah, of people,
that exchange information, exchange interest. Exactly, well, for the price of membership,
you get this event free, and it's actually cheaper to be a member than it is to come here for the
day itself. Indeed, yes, and that's on purpose, so just good Dutch sense, there means that you
would become a member, but I also see outside that you do a lot of stuff around in the community,
what open standards I see you popping up here and there promoting open standards, quite even
bother. We think that's important, and especially nowadays, where, um, yeah, we have the United
States being a well, well, I'll leave it there, but yeah, we have to change, and so we have been
always promoting open, open-source, open standards, but nowadays it's more important than ever.
Yeah, so fantastic event, very well organized here, central here in the Netherlands, and you're saying
that after COVID it was like one time a year, but now you're trying to get back to two times again.
Yeah, I mean, normally we do it two times a year, but we honest, the venue and all the
food and the drinks prices has gone up a lot in last couple of years, especially since corona,
50% more expensive. So, so that's why we lost money for the last three years, and we had to change things.
Either, um, more, more contribution, or, um, more, more sponsoring, or go to a cheaper venue.
So, for this year, we only doing one events, but next year we will be doing two events again.
So, what are the things you do if you come and remember what all the benefits are there?
Well, the most important benefit is, of course, this conference, and to be honest,
there were more benefits in the past, we have, of course, the most famous NLUG FTP server,
where you can find every, every contribution all the way back.
Yeah, um, and yes, we have some, um, some perks like, um, a, a, a contracts, um,
that, um, self-employed people can, can use a standard, um, and in the past we had, um, um,
yeah, or, or Riley books that you could catch cheaper, but that's not anymore, and with some more perks.
So, yeah, we are, we are trying to find more perks again, and maybe one of those perks is that,
as I remember of the NLUG, you can now also become a member of the, um,
echo thing. Um, so some people might think, well, you know, I'm, I'm living in the Netherlands,
but, uh, I'm a foreigner, about the lander, my Dutch has some great, what is the benefit of coming
to a conference, where all the presentations are in. No, no, um, um, so a lot of talks are in English,
and most of the speakers, they either, they already started in English, or they asked, um,
to the attendees, do we, do I need to do English? Yeah, okay, like,
because they questioned why we were rude, do I do it, and don't you do have the English, and then,
and then, all of a sudden, there was an English. So, it's a fantastic event. I hate myself
across the head for not coming here before, uh, smaller event than Fossdem, but more intimate,
I would say, and there's better food. Way smaller than Fossdem, of course, but, uh,
I think almost, that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny because I've, uh, as I'm going past,
I see all the colleagues from other companies that I've dealt with, and so, uh, an excellent,
an excellent opportunity to network within the Netherlands. Yeah, things out too, yeah. Yeah.
Well, thank you very much for taking the time, and thank you for putting on the event, and I look forward
to, uh, seeing you at the next one. Hopefully, we can do an, uh, interview beforehand to
remove the event, rather than after the fact. Yeah, sure, great. And here we are, again, at the
NL UUG, and I'm talking to, Nico Riga, I believe we've spoken before, possibly. Yeah, that was a
Fossdem, I think, two years ago when we had a nice conversation. And also, I'm an avid, uh,
HBO artist, and I mean, I, I, I have a podcast list, and an HBO, or a podcast at one of them. So,
excellent skills, that's not a show, cough, cough, cough. However, as you know, interviews don't
count as a show. So, what are you doing here? Um, I'm, uh, I was permitted to have a stand here
at the, at the end of the conference, uh, as a free software foundation year. So, I'm, uh, a volunteer,
for the free software foundation year. Uh, FSU fee is a charity, and then powers uses to control
technology. And, um, as that, I'm the coordinator for the Netherlands, but also, I'm now the
currently the maintainer of the automation of the Alan Sangaman, uh, translation and book translation.
As a, as an avid proponent of creative commons, I already know about this project. For, for the
few people who don't know what this is, can you tell us what that project is? So, uh,
our, our president, Mathias Kirchner, um, once reached out on our mailing list and said,
I want to tell my kids something what I do at work, meaning, uh, I will involve in the
free software community, I do activism, uh, policy work, and how can I tell that story? You
was looking for something of a children's books to tell that story. And there was nothing that
really came close to that. So, there was something missing, so he started, uh, inventing a story,
bedtime story. And over time, this grew to a point where it was actually publishable as a book,
right? And with the funds of the FSFE, actually, it was turned into a book. And with some
agreements with publishers, it's just now, uh, illustrated children's book, uh, under creative
commons license. And, uh, the book is about, uh, it's called Ada and Sangaman. And, uh, the little
girl Ada lives in his fictures town, where Sangaman is the main provider of anything technology.
And to some happenstance, uh, actually, uh, Sadaman is compelled to, uh, to use the power,
he has over the devices, uh, for something that restricts the freedom of, of Ada and all the kids
and, uh, the parents, we're just going to get the idea for this. I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. You have to ask Matthias that.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But it's a really inspiring story because it, uh, it's, uh, it's highlights,
it puts into a way the, um, the power of technology and the control, the, how important that is
in a, in a world, in a, in a fun world that children can understand. And also, um,
calls upon the moral beliefs. Yeah. So, yeah. There was a teacher. I think it was in Spain that, uh,
had the, uh, the book to the children and then asked, like, could you write a letter to this Mr.
Sangaman after everything that happened in the story? Yeah. And, uh, the skis were pretty much
vicious about what actually happened in the story, what they were going to tell the Sangaman,
what he did. Uh, so it really brings to them that the, the idea of good and bad in the story
and moral morality of it. Yeah, super, super. So, um, what's going on with the free software
foundation, Europe? So, we had a lot of things going on, uh, multiple campaigns. Uh, so here
and the booth, you see, not just the book, which is highlighted. Also, you see, um, some of the
stickers and flyers were, if we have a phone call. Probably the only public code should be any
other way. Yeah, indeed, public money, public code. It feels so obvious, but I think the, um,
it's such a catchy phrase that I've heard it actually and, uh, also members of Parliament
recited because it's so obvious. Yeah. Yeah. Um, still, it's, uh, a campaign that we leveraged to
communicate this idea, uh, it was, uh, a year ago, it was in Germany where we had a public
money code event where we tried to, um, put it into practice and, um, offer a stage to, um, to
to municipalities or the governments of where things are going well, or maybe some, some sort of
critical voices, I think should improve and, uh, really bring people together to, to make it better.
Perfect. So, if, um, we can join for a reasonable price, uh, to be a supporter of the
free software foundation Europe, you don't need to be in Europe to join, I imagine.
Anywhere, I can, uh, I can support the advocacy of the nation, which is, uh, kind of, uh,
appreciate it. Yeah. And, um, if people want to, or they're on the other ways, the people can
help volunteering their time, or, uh, yeah, anything goes, uh, in a sense, which we are,
a charity, and we run mostly on volunteers, so specifically if you just want to provide us a
bit of financial support, which is very welcome, you can go to ffd.org-donate, which is also enabling
all the IT infrastructure needed for the, the book translation to do. Yes. And,
then we have various communities, uh, we have local groups, so in the Netherlands, we put everything
on the one umbrella of the whole of the Netherlands. Uh, I think, and, especially in Germany,
we have smaller local groups, because we have a lot of supporters there. Yeah.
Then, uh, we have a translators community, but people doing, uh, translations of the
newsletters, the website, uh, and other defliers, things like that. We have, um, some, some design,
uh, community, so to me, myself, I also contributed as a photographer to events, so
if you have a particular skill or an interest, then you want to find a way to contribute,
often as a way you can contribute. Super. Well, thank you very much for taking the time,
and enjoy the rest of the event. Hi, everybody, this is Ken here again, and that we have
today, Ehrlich, digital on-device.nl, but which means? Yeah, you could also say it in English,
the coalition for fair digital education. And I'm talking to you. Here to all me,
I'm, uh, one of the initiators of this, uh, of this project. Okay, well, I'm not saying,
so give us that elevator picture about what this is and what you're trying to do.
Uh, what we're trying to do is to transition the entire, uh, educational sector towards free
an open source software. So you're talking about, you know, for several schools, secondary school,
third level universities, that sort of thing. Yes, but our main focus is the foundational
education, so primary education and secondary education, because they're a deal with
vulnerable children that cannot make their own choices. Yeah. And also because the knowledge
in the educational sector itself is a lot lower than in higher education. Higher education has more,
uh, yeah, more good things on open source things are happening there. Yeah, and people are
more aware and more conscious about their doing. So can you describe for the listeners, mostly,
on Dutch for some reason, um, been in English podcast? Uh, what the current state of
place, if you're going into, um, what do they call it? Uh, you said you could school for the first
time. I can't remember what the Americans call their, uh, buses call, uh, elementary school or
national school. Yeah. Yes. So what, what do they, what are they presented with?
Maybe first need to tell something about the Dutch educational system, because in the Netherlands,
we have the freedom of education. That means that any type of conviction in life can
found their own schools. Okay. So you used to be able to pick between, uh, uh, uh,
actually got the gut-leg protestant Islam school or uh, not religious at all, but now this
choice has been changed into, go ahead and do a semi-kit sewer Microsoft school or to a Google school
and there's nothing else.
Which, see what you did there. Yeah. And even if you make the liberal decision to send your
kids to a Microsoft school, they might overnight change to a Google school. Yeah. And you have no
saying that. So what, what does that mean in practice?
Uh, for our project, you know? No, I mean, you send your kids to school and then
surely they still have books, you know, physical paper books, but why is that a problem? You
mean, if everything is on pen and paper and they, yeah, what it takes is still also have books,
but from very young age, they got a Chromebook. Yeah. And they're trained to use, uh, all the,
all the Google services without any critical question about what, what it's about and what's actually
happening in the, in this clouds of the big tech companies. Okay. But why is that a problem? Why would
child care even? What, why is that about thing? Uh, well, you want to make sure that you can be
making your own decisions about what happens to your data and how do you change your environment?
It takes away the answer. You make your being turned into a passive consumer of services that
someone else made in another country. And yeah, I'll just come on. I mean, we have laws in the
you that protect the rights of children and privacy. Yeah, I mean, I can't even say this is
but okay, surely surely those are the apply here. Yes, nice that you say that. It's like teaching
your children in school how to work with us best house and in school you give them a mask and
gloves and you don't and you have proper air filters and stuff like that. And then it comes out of
school and suddenly there's no gloves, there's no air filters, there's no masks. And they still work with
us bestos. Yeah, you train them up on these services and they continue to use them because that's
what they're used to. Because the legal fantasy that's happening now is they're all the schools
claim that their GDP are compliant, which is in practice if you press F12 button, you middle
see that it's not the case. They're not compliant. But even if they would be compliant, they
forget that it's important what you teach and what you teach is you should not be teaching services
that you cannot use ethically outside of school. So what happens now is you teach how to consume
big tax services and then you have this legal fantasy that kids go home and then read the terms and
conditions and then go, oh, oh, this is not such a good idea. Let's look for an alternative that I never
heard of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not, yeah, that's never never going to happen. So what what can we do
and what do you do in specific? Yeah, that's why most schools in Netherlands have some kind of foundational
document, why they fund it and that describes their view of society. This document should be the
basis of how you design an IT environment in a school. Yeah. And in for this, I'm not sure about
how that's in America, but in an Netherlands that would not mean that there would not be a single
school that's going to a US-A advertisement company for their IT stuff. Yeah, but we still do.
Yeah, currently because somehow people don't think about software, they're being bought
with just like you buy a table or a pencil. Yeah, it's a problem that needs to be fixeded by
something. Some company comes along and says, however we can fix all your problems,
it's please sign a contract and he has a bunch of Chromebooks and everything is taken care of.
So for procurement and for board level is very easy, but they don't see, they're not aware
of what's actually happening and what's public values are at stake. Yeah, but on the other hand,
the argument that I've heard, having put three children in through the Dutch education system,
is that our core function is to educate your children in, you know, reading, writing,
arithmetic and, you know, every sense that we can save by outsourcing this to somebody else,
on Microsoft as the biggest and that's faces when they go into business, they're going to
need to use these tools, you know, they're going to be able to need to use Microsoft
fist open to get out into the education system. And, you know, those are the arguments that
I have heard when I've gone in my Linux laptop into the classroom. So how can we change that?
How can we make this, make the change this necessary? Or it is all bunchery? It is, isn't it?
Okay, let me say, what is the story here? What are you doing? You've got to boot, you've got an
organization, you've got a plan, what is your plan? Yeah, our plan is, we first, what's the organization?
The organization coalition for fair digital education, we are a working group of the
Internet Society and want to keep the Internet open and transparent and interchangeable and
based upon open source and open standards. So that's like the big internet society as in
everybody knows. Yes. And you're part of, that's a working group and you're part of the Dutch
Dutch chapter. Dutch chapter of that, right. Okay, your string credit is accepted by the
Hacker Copic Radio community. It's not that you need to do something. So the plan is to what?
The plan is first to build an open source environment that's useful for schools.
Yep. Then do, while it's at schools with actual children, I collect a lot of feedback on what
we should be improving, because a lot of open source software is there and you can build the
perfect school environment. We're not great yet. For sure, if that is exactly what schools need.
So together with schools, we want to build that and then from there on, we'd like to invite
a few examples, schools where you can prove that open source running a school and open source
is a viable solution. And at one school director can hear that from another school director,
that is a very good idea and there's nothing to be afraid of. And that the money that we're
sending abroad and even if you are in the U.S. listening to this, it's not onto U.S. It's
could be in your community, it could be going to an IT company in your community,
funding your school and their kids going to your school, keeping basically taking the money from
big tech, who are making use of the Dutch Irish sandwich, keep taxes from you. So, you know,
you're supporting local businesses by going this way. Have you had much success with this?
Well, we have a new chief marketing officer. He's as an orange face and is in the White House.
All right, since then, we're no longer talking about some act of stack possible for a
way, but that scenario that might happen, there's more like, oh shit, what can we do?
Yeah, yeah. And what sort of, I'm looking here at the desk and I see some Chromebooks,
but it's not kind of defeating the purpose if you're giving the kids Chromebooks.
And these are no longer Chromebooks. I'm not out of there.
They're liberated from Chromebooks. So, they run open source over,
but it's kept with Mr. Chromebooks. We rooted them, flush the bills with the core boots,
installation, and then instilled debuting education on it. That could not be more free if you
hit it with a sledgehammer. And not his mystery. So, a lot of people will know who have
listened to HPR for a while, will know what all those words mean because we interviewed quite a lot
of those projects in the past. And so, free an open firmware, open stack, and the Mr. Chromebook
is a... It's a kind of very good in writing scripts to Ruth Chromebooks. Yeah, exactly.
He's still at it then, is he? And he's still at it. Now, I have used this in the past, but to be honest,
I find the keyboard layout extremely frustrating. Oh, so to say. And it has... Not having an F11 or an
F12 key. It has an insufficient amount of buttons. Yes. So, there's a lot of special buttons on top
that you can really map to function keys if you like, but you're still lack a number of function keys.
Exactly. How, however. What sort of applications are available?
Oh, there's a lot of available. First of all, the operating system. That's Debbie and Edo.
So, that comes with a server for central management and policy management. So, that if you're a
school and you have a thousand of them, you don't need to update them individually, but you can
just push a button roll out and put them in a policy group. That's it right.
Then we have a single sign-on solution to connect to all the other, all the other apps.
So, this is what we use authentic for that. Yeah. And then we connect to a next cloud, a big loop button,
Gibbon Edo or AB loss. There's our people, every installation system. Yeah. And we have lots and lots
of other software that you can connect to. And in nettles, we have educational publishers. They
are educational portal. Yeah. You can also connect to that with the same single sign-on
solution. Okay, very good. And it is envisioned that because we have an example of this recently
in the nettles, schoolbooks are provided by the school for your charge to the kids. And that
was down to two or three publishers. And now schools have decided to come together and form their
own publishing house, Ausdricks. Yes. Close to that. And it's envisioned that this would be
something similar. To me, looking at your presentation, it just makes perfect sense. And I've been
preaching this for the last ages. What can we do to make this a reality?
Are you referring to Neon? I'm referring to having... No, with the Chromebooks.
But the educational schools come together to do the educational materials themselves with
the new cooperation. Yes. Basically, we are approaching the same problem from the other
direction. They start on the top of the stack with the educational material. And we start at the
bottom with the hardware in the in the glass. Has there been any contacts with all between those two
groups or yes? Yeah, we have we had some chips with them. And we're quite on the on the same
pace. Very good. Very good. They were very enthusiastic about AI and we were not so enthusiastic.
Yes, I can understand. I should understand that need to let the air out of that tire for a while.
Useful elements all the way. So it's the right thing. I mean, this is something that any
school district could roll out anywhere in the world regardless. It's not about anti-American
big tag because it's more like more that we want to make sure that schools stay in control of
their attack. That's what that that's what the goal is. And you can do that by using
using open source software and being aware that there's lots of design decisions that affect
public values and that you can make a considerate decision in that. But what's what's to say that
like if you build this then you're going to have this organization in the Netherlands that
just assumes the role of big tech and schools won't be able to change or make a choice.
Yeah, that's a nice question.
Well, the end goal is that there's a code cooperation, the staging control of the of a reference
architecture and this reference architecture is based upon open source and on open standards for its
standard building blocks. So that for every building block can swap out one block for another block.
Either because you don't like this party anymore or you make in your school make a different
design decision as an underscore. For instance with video conferencing at all one school might
opt for a big new button. The next one will be happy with the video in the next cloud talk that's
already in the next cloud and at their school might prefer you see. So we have three solutions that
are interchangeable and dropperable. And because as a core of racism schools is stay in charge of
this reference architecture then local IT suppliers can fill up fill fill in the different elements in
the different building blocks. And we could possibly see like provincial or a municipality
deciding okay we will do this for all the schools in our in our community.
Well in the Netherlands, you don't want to have the school boards because we have
that's more the system that's like it works in Germany. You have indeed the or in Denmark.
There you have the municipality that's the schools but in the Netherlands schools are independent.
Yeah. So you could have like a regional based that schools for a particular region decide well
makes no sense that we all have servers for this part. That's it. Let's just agree over coffee that
we have the main server we share the the workload. Basically what I'm saying is
the potential is there for cooperation on the local or regional level. Yeah you can you can of course
collaborate and you also don't have to run you don't have to start running your own service
per school you can just put them in a local data center or in the server equipment room of the main
school building of that region or even by a the Catholic schools of the wrong servers and
if you want to go that way. Just say yeah just just be careful with the sprinkling water that they do
for the blessing. Yeah. Well was there anything else that I missed? Is there anything that we can do for you?
Well visit the website which is a nice I hope we put it in the show notes because spelling it out
in English is going to be art. And if you look at the contact page then you can find our
matrix group that you can join during the chat. And if you're living in the Netherlands you can sign
our petition which we will use to to go to Parliament to get more attention for this for this
problem. And yeah what else? Start a discussion in your school about what local
resources are made about software and about computing because computing is not neutral at all.
Yeah very good. Well thank you very much for John for taking the time and I do appreciate the
work that your book name and it has been a huge struggle even getting Linux into my kids laptops.
So I appreciate the mountain that you have to climb. So thank you very much for that.
Well thank you. And thanks for taking the time. Thank you again. Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure.
Like very much for the interviews there and I had a good conversation with one of the sponsors who
were a little shy to come on and do an interview so they do have a range of Joel available.
And if you're of Dutch nationality and he lived in the Netherlands for 10 years you should
mose you over to their side and if you're not able to find this then you probably shouldn't be
applying. So to finish off I want to thank the NL UG team, the volunteers, the venue staff and
of course all the attendees for a fantastic day. With any look this will not be the last time you
hear about this organization here on HPR hopefully I can prod a few of them to send in a few
shows of their own. And of course the recordings will be made available on their website
on the NL UUG FTP server for any of you who have come across top particular machine in the past.
So thank you very much for listening and tune in tomorrow again for another exciting episode of Hacker
Public Radio
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