¶ Linux Bluetooth Developer Meeting 2006 Posted 1 week ago on October 27, 2006
So... I'm in Finland now.

A couple weeks ago, Marcel sent me an email asking if I would be available to participate in a Linux Bluetooth developer meeting. Nokia offered to cover my expenses, so I cleared it with Seth and was like, "Helsinki, here I come!" The purpose of the meeting is to essentially decide on the future of the Linux Bluetooth subsystem. The primary topic has been finalizing the D-Bus API for hcid, hidd, btaudiod (doesn't exist yet), and Bluetooth networking. (aside: D-Bus is absolutely amazing, and GNU/Linux has been in desperate need of something like it for years. If you do any sort of desktop Linux development at all, you have to check it out)

I haven't participated in anything like this before, and it's absolutely fascinating. I'm not really a core BlueZ developer, but I have written a lot of documentation for the project. Representing at the meeting are people from Red Hat, SuSE, Tom Tom, PalmSource, and Nokia. Nokia is actually hosting the entire event at their Nokia Research Center headquarters, and has shelled out a fair bit of cash flying out a bunch of us, putting us up at hotels, lending us their conference rooms, and feeding us breakfast and lunch (please stop saying that Nokia is trying to kill Bluetooth!!)

Most of Wednesday was spent working out the core D-Bus API for hcid. I think the Tom-Tom guy was a little bummed because they don't like D-Bus. Tom-Tom devices have very strict memory and processing limitations (due to cost), and they don't want to have to link against D-Bus. Everyone else was like, "D-Bus r0x0rz!!!" Wednesday night, Nokia rented out a conference room/sauna in downtown Helsinki and sponsored a little social event. Apparently, all respectable conference rooms in Helsinki come with a sauna. So you have dinner, conduct your business, and then jump in the sauna. Picture 15 guys who just met hanging out butt-naked in a sauna, chatting about Bluetooth. yeah...

Thursday morning we worked on A2DP and unifying Bluetooth audio services in Linux. It's a total mess, and I don't envy the developers working on it. In the afternoon, we moved on to Bluetooth networking services (e.g. PAN, DUN, LAN). I was still pretty jet-lagged, so ended up just crashing after we split up last night. Today was less structured, and we talked a bit about HID. I also spent a few minutes pitching the book I'm writing with Larry (almost done!!!).

More on this later (and pictures)!

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