“The consumer electronics industry works differently than people actually think”, says Armijn Hemel creator of DeviceCode. Behind the different brands and casings is often the same hardware, created by a single Original Design Manufacturer. But the disclosure of security vulnerabilities is mostly focused on single devices. So when a CVE is published for device A from vendor X it conceals that the security flaw may also exist in a similar device of a different vendor. DeviceCode collects structured technical information about consumer devices to reveal these hidden patterns of the industry in order to improve security. Demystifying the electronics industry can also be a step toward increasing the local production of electronics. Reasons to opt for local manufacturing are the vulnerability of global supply chains, environmental impact, worker rights, software security and preventing backdoors. A better understanding of the industry could inspire a bottom up approach to a more diversified electronics industry. Links DeviceCode repositories: Code Data NGI Zero projects DeviceCode And also mentioned: VulnerableCode If you are interested in Armijn’s knowledge about Open Source Software supply chain management (briefly mentioned at the end of the podcast) watch the NGI Zero webinar with Armijn: Open Source in (Consumer) Electronics Supply Chains (Episode 1 of a 4-part series The Ins and Outs of Open Software Supply Chain) Other projects and talks mentioned The Open Wrt hardware device: OpenWrt One Talks on the hardware supply chain by Andrew “bunnie” Huang Supply Chain Security: “If I were a Nation State…” at BlueHat IL, 2019. An Alternative to the American way of Innovation at TEDxPickeringStreet. NGI Zero webinar about IRIS: (Infra-Red, In-Situ) inspection of silicon. NGI Zero is a coalition of non-profit organizations lead by NLnet. It provides financial and practical support to people working on the free and open internet. You can find us on @NGIZero@mastodon.xyz & @nlnet@nlnet.nl. NGI Zero is made possible with financial support from the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet initiative. The podcast is hosted by Ronny Lam and Tessel Renzenbrink, the jingle created by Yarmo Mackenbach, all from NLnet. The NGI Zero podcast is shared under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

“This project was fueled by the idea that we should be less dependent on proprietary software. We don’t have control over software managed by companies that can access, analyze and sell our private data. It was a journey to own our software again”, says Julien Malka. He and Camille Mondon have implemented Clevis in NixOS to make it possible to remotely reboot servers with full disk encryption. The project was extended to port the Proxmox Hypervisor on NixOS. In this podcast episode they explain their project and talk about self-hosting as an antidote to the centralization of the internet. Links: NixOS/Clevis repo NixOS NixOS/Clevis NGI Zero project page NGI Zero is a coalition of non-profit organizations lead by NLnet. It provides financial and practical support to people working on the free and open internet. You can find us on @NGIZero@mastodon.xyz & @nlnet@nlnet.nl. NGI Zero is made possible with financial support from the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet initiative. The podcast is hosted by Ronny Lam and Tessel Renzenbrink, the jingle created by Yarmo Mackenbach, all from NLnet. The NGI Zero podcast is shared under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

“There would be no room for conflict if everyone in the world could exchange ideas without being watched”, says Kirill Zholnay founder of SelfPrivacy. SelfPrivacy aims to make self-hosting accessible to non-technical users. Born out of a dream to enable every person on the internet to live free of Big Tech surveillance, it provides a simple solution to set up and manage your own server. We spoke to Kirill Zholnay and lead full-stack engineer Inex Code about the need for user autonomy, their crush on Deltachat, NixOS, the joy of receiving positive feedback and how SelfPrivacy is financed. Links: SelfPrivacy SelfPrivacy NGI0 project page NGI Zero support services NGI Zero is a coalition of non-profit organizations lead by NLnet. It provides financial and practical support to people working on the free and open internet. You can find us on @NGIZero@mastodon.xyz & @nlnet@nlnet.nl. NGI Zero is made possible with financial support from the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet initiative. The podcast is hosted by Ronny Lam and Tessel Renzenbrink, the jingle created by Yarmo Mackenbach, all from NLnet. The NGI Zero podcast is shared under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

“The only thing that’s going to solve the mental health crisis in software engineering is more compassion, more collaboration, more attention to the people that you spend time with”, says Daniel Thompson-Yvetot, co-founder of Tauri Apps and CEO of CrabNebula. He also speaks about how the Cyber Resilience Act can be a watershed moment for open source. And how today’s internet is designed for autocrats and corporations and that the projects he works on like Tauri, Verso and Servo, all aim to help us regain our digital autonomy. Links: Tauri Apps CrabNebula Servo Verso Projects funded by NGI Zero: Tauri Apps Servo improvements for Tauri Webview library with Verso for Tauri Servo Webview for Tauri Other organizations mentioned: Commons Conservancy NGI Zero is a coalition of non-profit organizations lead by NLnet. It provides financial and practical support to people working on the free and open internet. You can find us on @NGIZero@mastodon.xyz & @nlnet@nlnet.nl. NGI Zero is made possible with financial support from the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet initiative. The podcast is hosted by Ronny Lam and Tessel Renzenbrink, the jingle created by Yarmo Mackenbach, all from NLnet. The NGI Zero podcast is shared under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

Adrian Georgescu was part of the Voice over IP revolution and in this episode you’ll learn much about that history and the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). With his company AG Projects, Adrian created Blink, a SIP client developed in parallel with the creation of SIP by the IETF. After Blink and SIP hit their limits, he created Sylk Suite which combines SIP with WebRTC to enable multi-party video conferencing. He also talks about what it’s like to run a FOSS company and having to compete with Big Tech offering services for free and much more. NGI Zero is a coalition of non-profit organizations lead by NLnet. It provides financial and practical support to people working on the free and open internet. You can find us on @NGIZero@mastodon.xyz & @nlnet@nlnet.nl. NGI Zero is made possible with financial support from the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet initiative. The podcast is hosted by Ronny Lam and Tessel Renzenbrink, the jingle created by Yarmo Mackenbach, all from NLnet. The NGI Zero podcast is shared under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

It is important to be able to communicate freely, says Jérôme Poisson a.k.a. Goffi. He is the main developer of Libervia, a communication ecosystem based on XMPP. XMPP is mostly associated with chat but Libervia offers many more features such as blogs, fora, calendars and file & photo sharing. It has gateways to other open protocols like ActivityPub and email. Jérôme identifies multiple problems in digital communications such as Big Tech monopolies and public debates taking place on proprietary platforms. Libervia can’t address all of these problems, because many of them are societal. But it does address some of them with a platform that is decentralized, based on Free Software and open standards. The project has strong ethics in its DNA, written down in a social contract. Erratum: The security audit for Libervia was done by NGI Zero partner Radically Open Security not by NLnet. Links: Libervia website repos Libervia explainer video’s Libervia chat channel Libervia project at the NLnet website XMPP software foundation Podcast mentioned by Jérôme with Lwenn from NLnet ActiviyPub: @Goffi@mastodon.social @xmpp@fosstodon.org @NGIZero@mastodon.xyz @nlnet@nlnet.nl NGI Zero is a coalition of non-profit organizations lead by NLnet. It provides financial and practical support to people working on the free and open internet. You can find us on @NGIZero@mastodon.xyz & @nlnet@nlnet.nl. NGI Zero is made possible with financial support from the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet initiative. The podcast is hosted by Ronny Lam and Tessel Renzenbrink, the jingle created by Yarmo Mackenbach, all from NLnet. The NGI Zero podcast is shared under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

“Can you really speak of a program being free software if you cannot bootstrap it?”, says our guest Janneke. He is the founder of GNU Mes, a project addressing the security concerns that arise from bootstrapping an operating system using large, unauditable binary blobs. GNU Mes helped to reduce the number and size of binary seeds that were used in the bootstrap of GNU Guix 1.0 by a factor ten from ~250 to ~25 MiB. Janneke talks about working on GNU Mes, its community, NGI Zero funding and calls for a fifth freedom: Freedom Four. The freedom to build a program totally from source. Links: GNU Mes website GNU Mes NGI Zero project page GNU Mes RISC-V NGI Zero project page GNU Lilypond Four freedoms of Free Software Ken Thompson: Reflections on Trusting Trust DOE040 the democratic school in Eindhoven Other projects mentioned: Stage0 Guix Gash live bootstrap with lfs Blog posts on GNU Mes: Janneke and Ludovic Courtès - April 26, 2023 The Full-Source Bootstrap: Building from source all the way down Janneke — June 15, 2020 Guix Further Reduces Bootstrap Seed to 25% Janneke - October 8, 2019 Guix Reduces Bootstrap Seed by 50% NGI Zero is a coalition of non-profit organizations lead by NLnet. It provides financial and practical support to people working on the free and open internet. You can find us on @NGIZero@mastodon.xyz & @nlnet@nlnet.nl. NGI Zero is made possible with financial support from the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet initiative. The podcast is hosted by Ronny Lam and Tessel Renzenbrink, the jingle created by Yarmo Mackenbach, all from NLnet. The NGI Zero podcast is shared under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

Joep Meindertsma, CEO of Ontola.io and creator of Atomic Data, discusses the challenge of data silos imposed by Big Tech. He introduces Atomic Data as a modular specification that enhances data sharing and interoperability, inspired by Tim Berners-Lee’s vision for the semantic web. Joep highlights how this project can personalize user experiences and improve collaboration. He also sheds light on the effect of NGI Zero funding on Atomic Tables and offers advice for potential grant applicants, emphasizing community engagement and innovation.