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In the presentation titled "How Puma Works" at RubyConf AU 2023, speaker Nate Berkopec, the maintainer of the Puma web server, delves into the inner workings of Puma and its architecture as a pre-forking web server designed for Ruby applications.

### Key Points Discussed:
- **Introduction to Puma:**  
  - Puma is described as a web server and Rack application server optimized for parallelism and efficiency.  
  - Since its inception by Evan Phoenix, it has gained immense popularity with over 260 million downloads.

- **Open Source Contributions:**  
  - Berkopec emphasizes the importance of community contributions, sharing his personal experiences with maintaining open source.  
  - He highlights that a collaborative model in open source can lead to better software and less burnout among maintainers.

- **Internal Architecture:**  
  - The server uses a pre-forking model where a parent process spawns multiple child processes to handle requests.  
  - Each process features a thread pool that allows concurrent handling of requests, improving throughput, especially during IO wait times, where Ruby's Global VM Lock (GVL) can limit execution.

- **Components of Puma:**  
  - Introduction of critical components such as sockets for connections, Rack for handling HTTP applications, and a reactor that buffers requests, enhancing performance during heavy uploads compared to other web servers like Unicorn.

- **Contribution Guidelines:**  
  - Berkopec encourages new contributors by outlining processes for engaging with the project including reading contribution guidelines, opening draft pull requests, and seeking feedback on issues.  
  - He mentions how contributors have previously named Puma versions after personal interests, fostering a sense of community.

- **Educational Resources:**  
  - Recomends utilizing the Ruby documentation and external resources for anyone looking to improve their understanding of webs servers, sockets, and threads.

### Conclusion:
The session not only explains how Puma operates under the hood but also inspires individuals to engage with open-source projects. Berkopec aims to cultivate a vibrant community around Puma, making contributions rewarding and accessible, ultimately pushing for more collaborative software development in the Ruby ecosystem.

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