Stefano Marinelli - founder of the BSD Cafe & illumos Cafe communities, creator of FediMeteo and BSSG. CEO at Prodottoinrete, sysadmin by trade, writer by habit, barista to a small corner of the internet that still believes software should be finished, reliable, and yours.
Living counters - number of days I've been around, writing code, running servers, and putting words online. Computed live, from the milestones that shaped me.
I was born in Ascoli Piceno, Italy, in 1979, and graduated in Computer Science from the University of Bologna in 2003. I founded and ran a small IT company focused on server management, virtualization, hosting and custom-tailored solutions - the company is now part of Prodottoinrete Group SRL, where I've been CEO since 2019.
I've been working with Linux since 1996 and the BSDs since 2002, with extensive experience in problem-solving, high availability and fault tolerance. I've worked with and for large companies, travelling all over Europe.
I live in Ferrara with my wife, enjoying the city's history and culture. Photography, composing music when time permits, and travelling are what I do when the servers let me breathe.
#OwnYourData - and always, securely.
Communities, a weather service for the Fediverse, and a static site generator that quietly prefers Bash over fireworks. All hosted on FreeBSD. Built to last.
Weather forecasts delivered directly to your Fediverse timeline - in your local language, every six hours, for thousands of cities across the world. Built on a tiny FreeBSD VPS using Python, snac and the humble Unix philosophy of small pieces working together. Dedicated to the memory of my grandfather - the first meteorologist I ever trusted.
A friendly, relaxed meeting place for FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and DragonFlyBSD enthusiasts - but if you prefer Linux, you're welcome too. Mastodon, Matrix, snac, RSS readers, a forgejo, chatmail, a journal and a weekly virtual BSD Pub. "Pro, not against."
A warm, volunteer-run space for users and developers of illumos - SmartOS, OmniOS, Tribblix, OpenIndiana and friends. "Good systems, great company." Brewed on FreeBSD + bhyve hosting SmartOS, because diversity in computing is worth defending.
What is, probably, the largest static site generator written entirely in Bash. Markdown & HTML, 60+ themes, fediverse-ready meta tags, i18n, multi-author, real RSS, incremental rebuilds and a Ghost-like browser editor - without a single runtime dependency beyond Unix itself. This very corner of the web could run on it.
A multi-author space for news, articles, tutorials and insights about the BSD and open-source world - hosting many of my deeper technical dives, alongside other writers from the community. A quiet reading room at the back of the cafe.
Six conferences across three years - from Dublin to Ottawa, Zagreb to Pavia and Brussels - about why the BSDs still matter, why FediMeteo runs on FreeBSD, and why migrating is, sometimes, the kind thing to do.
EuroBSDCon 2026 - Brussels, Belgium · talk coming soon
↗ Brussels, BelgiumDevConf Pavia 2026 - Pavia, Italy · talk (IT)
↗ Pavia, ItalyEuroBSDCon 2025 - Zagreb, Croatia · co-presented talk
↗ events.eurobsdcon.org/2025/talk/PJJLFVBSDCan 2025 - Ottawa, Canada · talk
↗ bsdcan.org/2025OSDay 2025 - Florence, Italy · presentation
↗ it-notes.dragas.netEuroBSDCon 2024 - Dublin, Ireland · "I Solve Problems"
↗ it-notes.dragas.netTechnical notes on one side; scribbles on the other. Both written by a human, imperfect and mine, as both are fond of reminding the reader.
Scattered IT notes since 2018 - a public extension of a private knowledge base. Not "from zero to hero" tutorials, but detailed explanations of how I actually solve problems day to day: FreeBSD jails, ZFS, HAProxy, nginx, snac, jail-based services, and the quiet craft of self-hosting done consciously.
"These scribbles, my kaleidoscope of thought, shall reveal the way I perceive the world." Reflections on memory, family, fog, music, Italy, and the occasional motorcycle crash that almost changed everything - alongside the gentler tech opinions that don't fit in a tutorial.
A handful of principles I keep coming back to - borrowed, refined, and stubbornly defended in a few blog posts along the way.
The question of who owns your data isn't rhetorical; it's an alarm bell for digital autonomy. Self-hosting must be done consciously - knowing what lies underneath, before the day something breaks.
This isn't a battle. Distro wars, Wayland vs. X11, BSD vs. Linux - we've shifted from collaborators to consumers. Let's build bridges instead of walls, and celebrate the original open-source spirit without torching the alternatives.
While other fields embraced minimalism, tech became bloated. Why use complex, oversized systems for simple jobs? Efficient, low-cost, minimalist computing isn't nostalgic - it's the adult choice.
In an era of mandatory updates and disposable goods, the value of boring software - finished, reliable, the kind that simply does its job - has disappeared. I'd rather ship something complete than something eternally almost.
Social networks are tools for communication between people; the moment we forget that, every metric becomes a kind of violence. Build communities like a cafe - warm, low-stakes, and made for people who'll stay a while.
Always available for consultations, collaborations, or just to talk about the BSDs over a virtual espresso. The door is open.