[HN Gopher] FOSDEM 2026 - Open-Source Conference in Brussels - D...
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FOSDEM 2026 - Open-Source Conference in Brussels - Day#1 Recap
Author : yannick2k
Score : 166 points
Date : 2026-02-01 10:30 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gyptazy.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gyptazy.com)
| yannick2k wrote:
| gyptazy provided a recap of the FOSDEM conference in Brussels,
| Belgium and it sounds great again. But his concerns about scaling
| are real and so, also I had often no chance to get a place for a
| talk. Wondering if it's still worth to get onsite next year or
| just to watch the recordings afterwards.
| torvald wrote:
| Hello from a packed devroom.
|
| You can't attend all 30+ tracks at once anyway, you need to see
| recordings afterwards anyway if you are remotely interested in
| consuming the conference. I'd say the experience is just as
| much about meeting the people behind all the internet handles,
| getting into a full lecture room one talk in advance and
| listening in to something you otherwise wouldn't, join
| something bigger than email lists and matrix rooms, it's a
| unique wibe you can't find anywhere else.
|
| I wonder if it naturally regulates itself in the way that
| people who get fed up by the queues don't come back the next
| year. You can definitely start by adding measures to limit the
| capacity or whatnot, but in both cases you exclude a certain
| part of the potential participants. I think I'd rather keep the
| wibe and ensure people can at least experience it once, than
| start gatekeeping.
|
| Also, the fries are good.
| ongy wrote:
| The most important realization about FOSDEM is really:
|
| There's no way you can fully experience it or do it optimal.
|
| It's really about making sure you get value out of it, listen
| to some interesting talks and meet some people.
| patrickmcnamara wrote:
| It's about collecting stickers.
| em3rgent0rdr wrote:
| It's about the friends you make when collecting stickers.
| Tomte wrote:
| It's about getting a selfie with the blue PostgreSQL
| elephant wandering around campus. :-)
| pjmlp wrote:
| It is been years since from my last time, however already
| about 10 years ago, it used to be either stick to a room,
| or stay close to a door and leave 10 minutes earlier, to
| try to get a spot in another talk, equally staying close to
| the door.
| ghaff wrote:
| Scale has been an issue for years. The last time I went I just
| hung out in one DevRoom for a chunk of the conference. Running
| from room to room tends to be an exercise in frustration. There
| are a lot of people and the campus isn't that straightforward
| to navigate.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| The number of times I heard this joke: Oh, nobody goes to
| FOSDEM anymore, it's way too crowded. But it's true. They have
| a serious overcrowding problem, with the queue outside longer
| than the number of seats, while the room is already packed.
|
| The app had nice indicators of where the overcrowding was,
| though. It pushed me to less popular talks, where I discovered
| some hidden gems. I also came home with a big list of
| recordings to check out.
| rurban wrote:
| With the car? I go by train, and then either by bike or tram.
| Much easier
| thunfischbrot wrote:
| > Like every year, I decided to travel to FOSDEM by car. It is
| not the most relaxed option, but it comes with one very
| important advantage: arriving early enough to secure a parking
| spot directly on campus. That also means the journey starts
| very early in the morning, long before the city fully wakes up.
|
| Curiously backwards. That's one way of reframing a disadvantage
| as an advantage. The train connection seems to be 3h15m to
| 3h30m from Neuss train station to FOSDEM. A single connection
| for the long-distance train in Cologne, the rest is local
| public transport within Brussels.
|
| (The OP may been /s without me realizing.)
| 0ct4via wrote:
| The OP goes on to genuinely talk about the advantage of being
| able to leave when they desire (usually only attending day
| 1), and the observation that their leaving early was
| worthwhile, as they were first in line to access the car
| parking area --- so it would seem very much to _not_ be /s.
| ongy wrote:
| Which probably also relates to DB pricing.
|
| Being _flexible_ with DB is _expensive_. Getting somewhere
| at all is generally cheap. Getting somewhere at a
| reasonable time is usually ok~ish priced. But being able to
| just take any train? EUREUREUR
| lucb1e wrote:
| And reliable. This is why I (near the border) drive
| across the border and take the train through Belgium.
|
| https://belgiantrain.be for finding trains and tickets
| to/from the nearest station, Etterbeek (or use another
| station if you want to take the tram, where you just
| swipe a bank card). The ticket is valid for any train
| going to your destination. For those <26yo, the price is
| discounted. Welkenraedt is an intercity station with free
| parking that goes directly to Brussels, in case that
| happens to be near to someone reading this
|
| Same with the Netherlands. Sadly no intercity stations
| have free parking but Nuth is on the path north and the
| highway exit basically ends in its parking lot. After a
| few stops you can switch to an intercity to Amsterdam
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Except for this year with the public transport strikes in
| Belgium... But I'm not going to waste more than half of two
| days driving next time.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Brussels is my native city: I grew up there. If you're at peak
| traffic hours (8-10am and 3-6pm) during weekdays then,
| depending where to where you go, there can be really bad
| traffic jams.
|
| But outside of these hours the car is simply much more
| convenient. I lived in Brussels for 42 years and did
| _everything_ that wasn 't walking distance by car (very mostly
| in the pre- Uber days). You simply know where the parking spots
| are and it's too convenient to have your own car when you come
| out of the restaurant, without to have to worry about the last
| bus / last tram / getting mugged.
|
| TFA's author went up early in the morning: he's dodging traffic
| jams.
|
| For example FOSDEM if I'm concerned there'd be no spot? I'd
| park on the other side of the _Bois de la Cambre_ and then walk
| to the campus.
|
| Bicycling? It's nice when you don't have a nice bicycle.
| Otherwise it's gone in 60 seconds. I also don't see many people
| bicycling when the weather is bad and, well, let's get real: it
| rains a huge freaking lot in Brussels.
|
| P.S: FOSDEM is happening in the _Ixelles_ district, adjacent to
| the _Uccle_ district (the _Bois de la Cambre_ is on both
| districts). These are the two poshest, classiest, most
| expensive districts of Brussels with very few high-rises and
| very few soviet-style buildings with lots of apartments (these
| exists but in other districts). It 's as if FOSDEM was taking
| place in _Beverly Hills_. In these posh areas there are parking
| spots.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| Brussels cycling infrastructure has improved a _lot_ in the
| last decade and the number of cyclists is growing every year
| while the number of households with a car is decreasing every
| year (less than half of the househols have a car now).
|
| As they say, there's no such thing as bad weather, only bad
| clothing. The weather in the Netherlands is not very
| different and it doesn't stop them.
|
| Also the public transportation is by far the best of the
| country, but that doesn't say a lot.
| dwedge wrote:
| Almost everyone I spoke to this year had issues with the trains
| into Belgium. Cancellations, delays, strikes.
| throw567643u8 wrote:
| Was the Eurostar delayed, does anyone know?
| benou wrote:
| My experience was good: on my way in Paris -> Brussels
| arrived 10min early, and on my way out Brussels -> Paris I
| had ~15min delay (apparently because Police had to board
| the train before Brussels).
| danlitt wrote:
| No, I don't think Eurostar was affected at all.
| madduci wrote:
| Already a recap?
| danlitt wrote:
| Why not? Most people reflect on their day before they go to
| bed.
| d4gli wrote:
| exactly this
| madduci wrote:
| This was a really long one. Sometimes there is a race to be
| the first posting recaps
| haunter wrote:
| > Not every open source project exists to solve geopolitical
| problems, and not every contributor arrives with a policy agenda.
| FOSDEM has always thrived on its diversity of motivations, and
| maintaining that balance will be increasingly challenging.
|
| It's not just the FOSS scene but there is an increasing crowd
| (mostly on the internet) of "everything is political". Honestly
| I'm not sure what will happen in the coming years but personally
| I try to take a step back and detach myself from all these
| things. Some (even here on HN) call this as privilege but then so
| be it I value my mental health more.
| wiz21c wrote:
| with AI we have entered capitalistic computing, where it's the
| scale of computing that makes it political (before, it was a
| clever idea that brought the political thing, like MP3,
| encryption, etc.). As it is massive scale (think 2GWatt data
| centers), I'm afraid the poor little FOSS guy won't be able to
| be as relevant as before. It's not David against Goliath
| anymore, it's FOSS against billions of zombies.
|
| I happen to be one of these FOSS guys though and as you do, I
| think it's better to stay off to keep my mental health; else it
| makes me feel powerless. How sad: 20 years ago I thought the
| fight was possible.
| positron26 wrote:
| This comment has so many statements framed by a lot of
| specific political premises that not everyone agrees on. It's
| hard to talk about political neutrality without going to the
| next higher meta language where we view our own interests
| alongside others' independent interests more abstractly.
|
| A lot of the problems people see with OSS are a result of
| "free/libre" having been successful at training OSS
| enthusiasts to embrace commensalist thinking, bomb-shelter
| monasticism, and to reject the consumer but then complain
| when the consumer has to turn to the network-effect
| entrenched platforms while other businesses lack the tools to
| compete in open networks that were never built.
|
| Anyway, check out https://prizeforge.com
| Teever wrote:
| Your comment reads to me like it will derail the conversation
| about FOSDEM into one about (American) politics and HN's policy
| regarding political stories.
|
| Was that your intention?
| isodev wrote:
| While tools and software itself is not political, the people
| behind it are. eg. When CEOs and founders and project leads
| leverage their audience for politics, then their tools are
| absolutely a political choice. Be it DHH's latest fasho
| ramblings or every time you do 'swift build' - Tim Cook takes a
| selfie with a sex offender.
|
| But let's refocus on FOSDEM and the mission of libre software
| to allow us to exist without "corporate oversight" or to just
| build, with tools made by other humans.
| AlexeyBrin wrote:
| > When CEOs and founders and project leads leverage their
| audience for politics, then their tools are absolutely a
| political choice. Be it DHH's latest fasho ramblings or every
| time you do 'swift build' - Tim Cook takes a selfie with a
| sex offender.
|
| I don't follow. Are you implying that by using Ruby on Rails
| or Omarchy one is _fasho_ aligned ? Or that people that use
| Swift somehow support sex offenders ?
| mordnis wrote:
| Sure sounds that way.
| GreenDolphinSys wrote:
| I don't think your examples are comparable. DHH is (/was?)
| the face of ruby on rails and basecamp, whereas Cook is just
| the latest person at the helm of a tremendously large
| (personnel-wise) company someone else built. There are only 2
| relevant phone types to consider, and please don't tell me
| Google/Samsung are morally superior to Apple. Even for ruby
| on rails, hundreds (thousands ?) of people have been
| contributing to it. It's not really "owned" by DHH anymore,
| and it's 21 years old, well before these rants.
|
| And not to compare badness, but DHH is ranting publicly on
| his blog about the projected % of white people in Norway in
| 2096 and quoting white supremacists in his lamentation about
| the UK not being more white. Blaming the increasingly
| totalitarian actions the UK has been taking on immigrants and
| not the literal lawmakers setting those policies is certainly
| an opinion to hold. It's a whole lot more in your face.
|
| I do agree about Omarchy linux though- that's still very
| closely associated with DHH and I'm not touching that with a
| 39.5ft pole, let alone before getting into technical issues.
| I was honestly pretty disappointed to see the typical dev
| personalities online cover Omarchy linux despite the crap DHH
| has been spewing on his blog.
| ksec wrote:
| >It's not just the FOSS scene but there is an increasing crowd
| (mostly on the internet) of "everything is political".
|
| Judging from HN we are pass that already. Absolute Peak of it
| was 2014 - 2017. But I guess this is a new trend especially in
| EUR.
| positron26 wrote:
| The trend is global and inherent to online psychological
| coupling and self-selection bias. The longer we go without
| healthy information spaces, the more the population will
| regress.
|
| There does however seem to be a "free/libre" vs open source
| rift along the Atlantic ridge, and it is being wedged apart
| by the US government flirting with a return to isolationism
| mixed with bullying and self-enforced credible threat
| geopolitics.
|
| It is really counter-productive for Europeans to think
| American OSS people are monolithic with US tech giants and
| the US federal government. Nonetheless, pluralism is good,
| and innovation will win, so I suppose it's just another
| hairpin in the game.
| teekert wrote:
| I for one am getting pretty sick of it. FOSS is by nature
| apolitical, pre-competitive and for me has always been an
| intellectual exercise. This is the only way it can power
| Chinese clouds, Azure, AWS and GCP, and the many EU sovereign
| systems we're going to see. To me it's a place to find kind
| people who are enthusiastic about tech, like me.
|
| Now I find myself judged when using Nix, genAI, Blockchain,
| Omarchy (and by extension even Framework), Podcasting 2.0
| related things, Centos Stream... It doesn't end. So many people
| that divide the world in good/bad, them/us. I'm tuning out tbh.
|
| (as an aside, I wish I could have some indication of how
| polarized the voting here on HN is ;))
| GreenDolphinSys wrote:
| The entire idea of F/OSS itself is political, and was very
| radical. We're just accustomed to it now, so it's not
| "political", in other words, it's not "controversial". Perhaps
| F/OSS is -more- political than other spaces because we organize
| around projects? Here, and on Reddit, we see the fallout of
| drama all the time in various F/OSS communities over
| disagreeing over policies. That's... politics.
|
| Unless you happen to live alone and interact with no one,
| basically every single interaction is undergirded by policies
| determined by humans. Politics. A computer/phone being built
| that is purchasable for legal tender, charged by electricity
| being fed into our homes, where we can send packets in the air,
| underground and across the world, doesn't happen by magic. It's
| literally the result of politics.
|
| "Detaching oneself" really just means "not paying attention to
| politics". And it's a free world to do so, especially for
| mental health reasons. It's definitely not healthy to be tapped
| into news/current events all the time and I have to take breaks
| myself. But for some people, they can't really detach when
| their literal existence is deemed "political". This is what
| people refer to when they say it's privileged to detach.
|
| Side Note: criticism of "detaching" is not referring to things
| like detaching for mental health. Internet trolls aside, that's
| a strawman argument. What it's referring to is the kind of
| people who say "oh, I'm just apolitical" or "tech is
| apolitical, it's just code", when really the status quo is in
| their favor and they have zero need to ever think about
| political issues. They would certainly not be "apolitical" if
| they were being banned from entering public bathrooms or being
| banned from contributing to F/OSS projects on the basis of
| their skin color!
| dijit wrote:
| I grew up poor enough that my classmates called me "Tramp".
| Hand-me-downs so threadbare they could pass for actual
| rubbish, couldn't afford deodorant or adequate dental
| hygiene; the works. The 10-year-old PS5 computer that barely
| wheezed into life was my escape into a world that genuinely
| didn't care about any of that.
|
| On the internet (1hr per day, courtesy of the local library),
| I was just the words on the screen. Nobody knew I was poor.
| Nobody knew I was weird-looking. Nobody knew anything except
| whether my code worked and whether my arguments made sense.
| That pseudonymity wasn't a limitation of the technology... it
| was the most liberating feature I'd ever experienced.
|
| When people say "everything is political" and "detaching is
| privilege", I feel like they're describing a completely
| different internet to the one that saved me. The privilege
| wasn't being able to ignore politics- the privilege was
| finally finding a space where the hierarchies that had
| crushed me in the physical world simply _didn 't exist_.
|
| Bringing identity and real-world political causes into these
| spaces doesn't make them more inclusive- it recreates the
| very social hierarchies we'd escaped. When you insist I must
| care about your cause, acknowledge your identity, or pledge
| allegiance to your political framework just to contribute
| code or discuss technology, you're making the space less
| meritocratic, not more.
|
| The early internet let us be judged solely on the merit of
| our ideas. That was radical. That was revolutionary. For some
| of us, that was the only place we'd ever experienced actual
| equality of opportunity.
|
| When you demand these spaces become "politically aware", what
| I hear is: "your refuge wasn't good enough, and now you need
| to care about my problems too." But this was the one place
| where I didn't have to perform social status, where I didn't
| have to prove I belonged based on anything other than what I
| knew and what I could build.
|
| I'm not saying the world's problems don't matter. I'm saying
| there used to be spaces where we could focus on intellectual
| puzzles and technical problems without importing every
| societal conflict. And frankly, for those of us who were
| outcasts in the physical world, losing that feels like losing
| the only place we ever truly belonged.
| teekert wrote:
| Fwiw, I 100% agree with this. All of a sudden the constant
| judging is there, it's seeping into the once clean,
| apolitical world-of-mind. It started on the big tech
| platforms, the new weary giants of flesh and steel, but
| it's overflowing into our hacker-minded spaces as well now.
|
| Like US families torn between 2 sides of their politics,
| they can't even have normal dinners together anymore. They
| can't communicate without judging, it's an illness, they've
| been weaponized against each other.
| GreenDolphinSys wrote:
| Well, it's hard to break bread with someone who you
| fundamentally disagree about things like humans rights
| issues with. Family or not. You don't just skip over
| that, and in fact why should you? Having blood relations
| means you have to sit and eat with someone who thinks you
| or people you know shouldn't exist or shouldn't be
| allowed to have the same rights as other people? I'm very
| glad that we've normalized not glossing over this kind of
| stuff anymore, because of "family".
|
| "our hacker-minded spaces"
|
| Spaces full of people.
|
| "once clean, apolitical world-of-mind"
|
| This only ever existed for select few people.
| GreenDolphinSys wrote:
| I'm not describing just the internet. I'm describing the
| nature of the world around us, both in meatspace and on in
| the internet in the context of this discussion. As
| regrettable as it is (I mean, who doesn't hate
| politicians?), it's just all politics, regardless if one
| chooses to detach or not.
|
| That pseudonymity you're describing still exists in many
| spaces to this day. I have no idea what many (most?) of the
| contributors on F/OSS projects look like, or anything about
| them unless they voluntarily divulged it. You don't have to
| "pledge allegiance to political frameworks", not for any
| F/OSS project that I'm aware of.
|
| What people do have to do more now is treat other people
| with respect, which the old internet very much did not do
| well. There are many people who can code, so projects
| actually don't have to keep around people who can't conduct
| themselves nicely.
|
| "When you demand these spaces become ..."
|
| "Demand" is a strawman argument. What changed overall is
| that people bring themselves into these spaces, not just a
| pseudonymous username. That comes with different
| expectations for conduct. Do you miss the flamewars of the
| past?
|
| "where I didn't have to prove I belonged"
|
| What F/OSS projects do you have to do this for? Basically
| every project I've contributed to had nothing like that.
|
| "... there used to be spaces where we could focus on
| intellectual puzzles and technical problems without
| importing every societal conflict"
|
| While I can empathize with this, I'm not sure if I entirely
| agree with this recollection of the internet. People could
| still be cruel to anyone who happened to reveal anything
| about themselves, as humans tend to do, that was
| "atypical", shall we say. I don't see why you still can't
| focus on technical problems, because unless you're a
| moderator, nobody is forcing you to comment on anything
| except technical discussions.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| Your reading of "politics" seems quite narrow. Creating a
| place free of social status, hierarchies and with equal
| opportunity? That's 100% politics.
| phkahler wrote:
| If that were the goal it might be politics. If its a side
| effect then its not.
| whilenot-dev wrote:
| Anonymity was a given in the beginnings of the internet,
| and we now need to fight hard for any remaining form of it.
| Your post makes me longing for my past, whereas GPs post
| makes me longing for our future.
|
| The virtual world(s) felt like equality of opportunity
| because everything was a blank canvas, or some canvas that
| barely had any fingerprints on it. For a lot of people the
| internet currently consists out of WhatsApp, Facebook, and
| Google News. So tell me, what is truly radical, what is
| revolutionary anymore?
| rendx wrote:
| I would go further and claim that anyone who sees themselves
| as "apolitical" just basically thinks their own opinion is
| the only true way to see things "rationally" (and as such
| "fact" and not an opinion; nothing to be "political" about),
| and everyone else is just plain wrong/mistaken. Since they're
| not ready to admit this to themselves and others, they hide
| behind the "apolitical" label. Otherwise they would see that
| their own opinion is a "political statement" on equal basis
| as others. It doesn't even make a difference if you voice it
| or not.
|
| This strategy works poorly to avoid conflict and friction
| (life), since one just shifts conflict to reappear elsewhere.
| Hence the often claimed need to self-isolate "for mental
| health" to avoid getting in contact with... positions _such
| as one 's own_, and half-suppressed anger at all those that
| just don't see what is RIGHT.
|
| Hint: It doesn't work.
| pulkitsh1234 wrote:
| > The quality of the talks was high
|
| Maybe I was in the wrong rooms, but the quality of the talks were
| really low.. Most of them were advertising one kind of service or
| another.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Fosdem just has a huge amount of talks. Some are great, most
| aren't.
| larodi wrote:
| The contrast of this text is really awful, how does anyone even
| read it without reader mode?
| yladiz wrote:
| It looks okay to me. The links are a bit too low contrast yes,
| but I think the normal text is black. The bigger issue is
| likely the font weight, it must be at like 200/300.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| Isn't it black on white? I can't see a color specified anywhere
| other than for <a>
| joezydeco wrote:
| For me, it's a thin font in various shades from black to
| light grey, on a pure white background. I'm with the comment
| above, it's unreadable.
| NeutralForest wrote:
| It was fun but indeed, I spent a lot of time waiting in line for
| talks and in some rooms I couldn't even enter at all.
| AlexeyBrin wrote:
| Not the same experience of course, but I think you can watch
| the presentations you've missed
| https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/streaming/
| NeutralForest wrote:
| Indeed! It's the 3-4x times I'm going to FOSDEM so I'm mainly
| looking to connect with people doing cool stuff tbh,
| otherwise I can just watch stuff online for sure.
| jzwinck wrote:
| For talks which will obviously be popular, go to the talk
| before it even if it's not as interesting. It's not common to
| have two super-popular talks in a row in the same room.
| NeutralForest wrote:
| Yeah ofc but I also like to walk around, I might just camp in
| a room next year.
| greatgib wrote:
| On my side, I had the feeling that there was less room/talk
| full to the point you can't enter compared to previous years.
|
| Except in the H building.
| weinzierl wrote:
| That is how it's supposed to be. You can watch the talks at
| home at any time but the opportunity to meet random yet like-
| minded people from all over Europe is unique.
| notpublic wrote:
| Offline videos are available here: https://video.fosdem.org/2026
|
| It's organized by room which you can find here:
| https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/tracks/
| wooptoo wrote:
| Hi, I'm trying to find Lennart Poettering's presentations, but
| they don't seem to be available yet?
| https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/speaker/lennart_poettering/
| Thanks
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Look forward to ye olde uncle Lennart's old-timey sales
| pitch.
|
| I'm gonna summarize the Varlink talk: DBus is, and I quote,
| "very very very complex" and his system with JSON for low-
| level IPC is, in fact, the best thing since sliced bread and
| has no significant flaws. It works basically just like HTTP
| so the web people will love it. Kernel support for more great
| shit pending! I'm not sure where the hardon for a new IPC
| system with lernel (keeping that typo) support is from, but
| he's been trying for 15 years now. AFAICT, the service
| discovery problem could be solved by a user space service
| without much trouble. I mean if the whole thing wasn't an
| exercise in bad technological taste.
| miduil wrote:
| Hehe, I'm eagerly waiting for this one as well as I'd be
| extremely happy to replace some hack to run docker images
| with `systemd-nspawn` served from the nix store.
| ignoramous wrote:
| The FOSDEM speakers are sent emails to review and approve the
| video recording (this involves rudimentary stuff like
| reviewing the start and end time, if the automated system
| didn't get it right; choosing one of the three audio channels
| etc). The recordings that have been reviewed and approved
| would be online by now.
| ptx wrote:
| > _One of my personal highlights of FOSDEM 2026 was a wonderfully
| simple yet brilliant idea by the Mozilla Foundation: giving away
| free cookies._
|
| They had an opportunity there to restore the "Cookies are
| delicious delicacies" message [1] in a more appropriate context,
| but it seems that's not the sign they went with.
|
| [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213186
| napolux wrote:
| They do this every year since a while :)
| positron26 wrote:
| As a US citizen, when I see the phrase "European digital
| sovereignty," I'm a bit concerned that our OSS enthusiast and
| activist allies in that geography are learning to associate
| American OSS with American tech companies and US government. This
| could deepen the old free/libre vs open source divide that seems
| to have polarized along the separation by the Atlantic ocean. If
| so, in a time where Americans may be soon head-to-head with a
| runaway tyrannical government, our EU allies will be busy
| retreating into free/libre commensalist thinking that seem
| tunnel-visioned on using government funding to escape MS Word,
| something that is going to be the last thing on their minds if
| actual sovereignty concerns emerge.
|
| The more general goal will remain to protect all individual
| freedoms from all tyrannical governments, not to depend on them.
| It will remain to use better information technology to enhance
| the functioning of all governments and to create healthy
| competition in all markets to protect consumer choice. American
| OSS has not forgotten this one bit. Our country is just having a
| moment, and it won't help if EU OSS participation writes us off
| as casualties while EU OSS focuses on "uniquely European"
| solutions.
| yunnpp wrote:
| I don't think anyone is confused about American OSS and
| American corporations run amok with wealth accumulation and
| regulatory capture. It's a European conference held at a time
| when governments are waking up to the realization that foreign-
| owned proprietary software is a bad idea, and the idea of
| "digital sovereignty" has been around for a bit and did not
| originate at FOSDEM. The governments also seem to understand
| that OSS helps with transparency and minimizing costs by
| investing into a commons (though the message bears repeating;
| FSFE, EDRI and such do a good job getting it out), so hopefully
| they'll stick with that and not replicate the US model.
| positron26 wrote:
| > I don't think anyone is confused about American OSS and
| American corporations run amok...
|
| You literally just lumped it all together, exactly the
| fallacy I'm voicing my concern about.
|
| > foreign-owned proprietary
|
| OSS is global. "Foreign owned" is relative. If Americans
| reject "European" open source, it would make zero sense.
|
| > the US model
|
| What even is "the US model?" The things that are being
| described as "American" or "European" here are not inherently
| national.
| yunnpp wrote:
| How did I lump both together when I specifically called
| them out separately, lol.
|
| Everybody understands OSS/free software is global (though
| copyright/left is still subject to export controls and
| other laws.) No question about that. And I was specifically
| talking about _proprietary_ software there, you even copied
| that in your reply...Proprietary software is bad; foreign-
| owned is even worse, like the EU has learned recently when
| Microsoft cuts your email short, for example.
|
| The "US model" is obviously big monopolies or duopolies run
| unchecked, allowed to buy, prevent and starve competition,
| then seeking regulatory capture to secure a moat. That is
| what people know, for better or for worse. No laymen knows
| the FSF, or what that guy in Arkansas in the xkcd is doing
| for the digital infrastructure.
|
| I think the main challenge for Europe will be to manage
| those public investments in an effective way for people's
| benefit. As far as I know, there are few precedents, and
| maybe nothing of that scale. China pulls off of open/free
| software significantly, mostly to avoid US proprietary
| software, but to my knowledge they don't give much/anything
| back. So it seems challenging, but I'm also excited for
| how/if they pull it off.
|
| By the way, I donate to both US and EU free software and
| digital rights organizations. It was not my intention to
| nurture your conception of a divide, if that is what you
| took from my comment.
|
| > The more general goal will remain to protect all
| individual freedoms from all tyrannical governments, not to
| depend on them.
|
| This is more of an American pov and will probably be a
| disconnect for Europeans. Their governments don't screw
| them as much, so they probably don't see them as
| tyrannical. Those governments investing in proprietary
| software to move away from other proprietary software would
| be a mistake; so government investment into free/open
| source should be seen as a win, not something to shy away
| from in the name of individual freedom.
| positron26 wrote:
| > How did I lump both together when I specifically called
| them out separately, lol.
|
| Dude, "American OSS and American corporations" is simple
| conjunction, a union, treating two things as one so that
| you can make a single predicate statement about them. If
| you mean to make separate statements about the two
| things, maybe don't group them into the same sentence
| phrase?
|
| I asked you not to group these things together. If this
| provokes you to begin regurgitating "free/libre" ideology
| all over again, you obviously think that being asked to
| separate American OSS and American corporations is
| somehow incompatible with OSS or "free/libre". American
| OSS marched in front of Microsoft to demand refunds. Get
| it right.
| yunnpp wrote:
| At this point you're clearly misconstruing my statements,
| and/or have some problems with reading comprehension.
| Your others comments don't leave much to be positive
| about, either.
| lava_pidgeon wrote:
| 1.) it's quiet clear the European sovereignity is a pitch to
| get resources into the OS eco system. 2.) it's very easy: after
| governments companies ans users will follow as os proofed to
| work. 3.) this is not us vs eu,.it is just us vs. The rest of
| the world. Canada and Mexico are threatened by Trumpy as well
| and located on another side of the Atlantic and probably their
| government are interested into OS as well. 4.) As there is not
| an os business model of US will work , money and users will be
| else where starting in Europe. It will be easier for Open
| Source somewhere else. 5.) so this is my last bit: your comment
| sounds like American don't want to protest against Trump
| because it is too dangerous. Well, that's the result as 50% of
| people voted for Trump. In your scene: Less resources for open
| source in the us
| positron26 wrote:
| > your comment sounds like American don't want to protest
| against Trump because it is too dangerous
|
| At this time, we are still openly committed to the 2nd
| amendment in defense of the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 6th and so on. I
| am encouraging others to participate in open-carry
| demonstrations to make it clear to the authoritarians that
| they will not get the intimidating optics of an unopposed
| crackdown against a helpless crowd that they want.
| Personally, I grew up shooting things, so handling
| bootlickers will be natural if it comes to it.
|
| Technically enabled solutions to better communicate,
| organize, and represent the will of the people would help a
| lot. Bomb-shelter thinking will not help much. If the US
| devolves into a Russian style authoritarian state, one where
| I will no longer be welcomed off the plane, the EU will have
| more to worry about than Windows. My ideas on the technically
| enabled side are complex but sound, so I encourage any
| interested in doing full stack Rust to get a hold of me by
| clicking links. I'll be finishing up some shader programming
| and feedback rendering today as the next piece of my
| strategy.
| throwaw12 wrote:
| > At this time, we are still openly committed to the 2nd
| amendment in defense of the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 6th and so on.
|
| Has it ever worked? ICE is killing Americans, and you can't
| point your gun to them, its not lawful.
|
| If Trump tells ICE to seize all weapons in the US, or
| otherwise shoot people, you can't point your gun to them,
| its not lawful.
| goodpoint wrote:
| mr putin, is that you?
| fvdessen wrote:
| I for one found this event really sad. It's like the OSS
| community has rejected the past 5 years of software and
| technological changes and now choses to live in a retro computing
| bubble.
|
| We're in 2026, hardware is made in dark factories in shenzhen in
| fully automated assembly lines by the million of units. Software
| is written using LLMs hosted in gigantic datacenters. Millions of
| people are now writing their own software with vibe coding
| platforms from their phones
|
| What is the FOSDEM community's answer to the real concerns that
| these changes pose ? Let's hand solder raspberry pis ! let's self
| host LLMS from 2 years ago on FreeBSD ! Look, i can run wasn
| linux on this risc-v cpu !
|
| These takes are completely out of touch with reality, no wonder
| that nobody younger than 40 was attending the conference. The
| next generation is doing something else and rightly so.
| positron26 wrote:
| Totally. People who feel this way, please get in touch with me.
| https://positron.solutions
|
| Where I'm going is in the complete opposite direction, making
| paths for consumer demand to get into the software and form a
| real two-way relationship between the programming & support and
| users who just want to put money in and get stuff out.
| guerby wrote:
| "nobody younger than 40 was attending"
|
| Hmmm, I was there and this is definitely not true.
| throw567643u8 wrote:
| > What is the FOSDEM community's answer to the real concerns
| that these changes pose ?
|
| I only caught half a dozen talks, and two of them talked about
| this exact point.
| lmf4lol wrote:
| which ones ? would like to watch them. thanks in advance
| anthk wrote:
| LLM turds will degrade more and more over time. The newbies
| will become even dumber and people with actual knowledge will
| be several steps over anthing else trained to copy and paste
| from bullshitters.
| eMPee584 wrote:
| Would you mind showing some compassion for the unintelligent,
| it's none of their fault.. It's incentives, sociodynamics and
| manifold other preconditions that bring about these symptoms.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| It's not clear what you want them to do instead.
| fvdessen wrote:
| Have an AI track focused on how to use AI to improve OSS
| software instead of how to run LLama on RISC-V.
|
| Invite the open source developpers behind popular OSS AI
| frameworks such as opencode, etc.
|
| Invite talkers from large companies that produce open source
| software and models such as Mistral.AI
|
| Invite talkers from companies that run OSS LLMs at scale such
| as groq
|
| Invite the people who build drones in Ukraine, (probably the
| most succesful open hardware story to date). Have drone
| building workshops / drone piloting stands
| benou wrote:
| Anyone can propose a devroom for FOSDEM, I hope you'll do
| it next year :)
| fvdessen wrote:
| Yes, maybe I should.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| It's been ~three years now we've been hearing about "AI"
| non-stop. Am a bit tired of it to be honest.
| fvdessen wrote:
| It is extremely exhausting, but it's also the biggest
| change in tech since the invention of the internet. It
| don't think it can be ignored.
| benou wrote:
| > What is the FOSDEM community's answer to the real concerns
| that these changes pose ? Let's hand solder raspberry pis !
| let's self host LLMS from 2 years ago on FreeBSD ! Look, i can
| run wasn linux on this risc-v cpu !
|
| Maybe, just maybe, they're having fun? FOSS is not only about
| corporate open-source, but also genuine curiosity. Both can
| have their place.
|
| > no wonder that nobody younger than 40 was attending the
| conference. The next generation is doing something else and
| rightly so.
|
| I saw a lot of students at FOSDEM, attending, presenting and
| helping the at organization.
| fvdessen wrote:
| OSS original point wasn't just to have fun among nerds, but
| to have a real impact on the world. Fun and curiosity is
| fine, but there's a line where it becomes a tech themed larp
| event, and FOSDEM is trending towards the later.
|
| Corporate Open Source should have its place at FOSDEM. The
| linux dinosaur companies such as Redhat are still there. But
| what about the new ones ? What about Mistral, Odoo ? Even the
| 'evil' ones such as facebook, github, etc, aren't they
| contributing a lot of open software ? Aren't they more
| relevant than let's say Olimex ?
|
| There were some students, yes but the attendence is growing
| old, and the chit chat is more about 'remember this and that'
| than 'we're building the future'
| ignoramous wrote:
| Looking at the talk lineup of a LLM related devroom, it
| sounds forward looking to me:
| https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/track/ai/
|
| > _but to have a real impact on the world._
|
| I did find devrooms, stands, and main track talks on this.
|
| > _Even the 'evil' ones such as facebook, github, etc,
| aren't they contributing a lot of open software_
|
| Google is one of the two lead financial sponsors of FOSDEM
| (the other being RedHat). So clearly, there doesn't seem to
| be any restriction or judgement by the organizers on
| whether BigTech is 'evil'. I get that Jack Dorsey (of
| Square/Block) withdrew his main track talk the year prior,
| which was unfortunate.
|
| > _the chit chat is more about 'remember this and that'
| than 'we're building the future'_
|
| Well, for better or for worse, FOSDEM is not exclusively a
| tech start-up event.
| fvdessen wrote:
| > Looking at the talk lineup of a LLM related devroom, it
| sound forward looking to me:
| https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/track/ai/
|
| It doesn't to me at all, it is mainly focused on self
| hosting llms, which is a complete deadend. It just isn't
| feasible to self host the useful models, the hardware
| requirements are just too big.
|
| The current topic of focus around AI are: how to adapt
| development practice to agentic coding, agent harness,
| agent orchestration, mcp integrations, etc.
|
| I guess there is some unease in the oss community to rely
| on large companies to run and host the models. But this
| isn't entirely new, we also relied on big companies to
| manufacture our computers. It's just the way it is.
|
| > Well, for better or for worse, FOSDEM is not a tech
| start-up event.
|
| It is weird, there are a lot of startups present, look at
| all the stands showcasing projects. Aren't those startups
| ? What I noticed is that they are usually funded by
| public grants rather than VCs. I am not sure why this is
| the case.
| JohnDohnBohn wrote:
| In the end, it's all about socializing.
| throw567643u8 wrote:
| I watched at home and drank Belgian beer in the afternoon.
| nesarkvechnep wrote:
| I hope you didn't get a hangover. They have great tasting beers
| but put too much sugar in them.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| An alternative: FluConf https://2026.fluconf.online/
| greatgib wrote:
| What saddens me a lot is that a lot of talks become low level
| beginner introduction fast food talks.
|
| I think that it was better when most talks were 45 mins to 1h
| with deeper more advanced and senior content.
|
| At the same time, with the overcrowded aspect, it becomes harder
| to socialize and meet people really involved in maintaining open
| source projects in my opinion. There are a lot lot lot more
| "users" on both sides (visitors and speakers) than what it used
| to be 10 years ago.
| thinkbud wrote:
| My only disappointment with this year's geopolitcs-enhanced
| (always a welcome addition to tech by the way, as tech is
| ultimately steered by politics!) FOSDEM is a great
| underrepresentation of mainland China, and more generally the
| whole Global South. It is sad to see this omission in a time when
| the EU's free movement needs more like minded allies than ever.
| And what can be more free than that untethered by the chains of
| empire.
|
| Sure, there was some mention of Brazil in some talks. And yes, a
| couple of China specific speakers etc, but in my view this is
| almost cancelled by the inclusion of topics about taiwan.
| Similarly the China focused talks mention "specific risks"
| stemming ostensibly from a differing system of governance.
|
| Almost as if corporate sponsorships induce self censorships which
| limit true organizing effort.
| thinkpal wrote:
| I receive stickers from Taiwan booth. From China I receive
| nothing
| noDramaJustCode wrote:
| Corporate sponsorships enabling "self-censorship"? That's rich
| from someone whitewashing authoritarianism. If FOSDEM
| underrepresented China, good - tech thrives without Beijing's
| chains. Bring real open-source contributions next time, not
| propaganda.
| thinkpal wrote:
| As a prolific, up-to-date not sticking my head in the sand vibe
| coder, I was apalled by the amount of disregard and denial of the
| way that Artificial Super Intelligence is redefining software.
| Maybe if we face reality as an open source community we can
| eventually come to tackle evil geniuses the likes of Sam Altman
| and such. The current approach is NOT working!
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