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.
> 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.
"Most of them were advertising one kind of service or another."
10y ago we had the issue with one of the talks in the IOT devroom which was very "corporate" with one presentation turning into the promotion of a proprietary product.
> 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.
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.
OSS and FOSS are global, not American or EU or anything. The geopolitical situation is on another plane. FOSS can and will be used as a tool for strategic autonomy, for better and for worse.
Why would one at this very moment look with suspicion at a FOSS contributor for the sole reason (s)he's American?
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.
Remember this is just one conference. This is not a top–down imposition of a new European world order. While the amount of policy discussion is quite high — out of necessity now — and EU representatives attend — this event is still a lot of developers coming together.
This is also why the EU has a hard time. America prefers the capitalist model. EU is trying to find ways encourage individual developers each with their own interests to contribute to shared European goals (which the devs also share but might not find interesting), and they're trying to do this without directly saying "you there, go and do this", and that's harder than herding cats.
For instance they do it through NLNET funding. Devs can propose projects and the ones the EU wants to fund will receive funding. It's a roundabout way to do things. Let's see if it pays off.
> let's self host LLMS from 2 years ago on FreeBSD
Sounds brilliant. 2024 LLMs were great, and hosted in gigantic datacenters. South Park did an episode on ChatGPT in 2023 to assist with the timescales.
If we can run Free LLMs on a desktop PC that's competitive with 2024 a massive win.
Unless of course you believe that AI will continue to increase exponentially, in which case we're heading for such a different world in 10-15 years that it's meaningless to worry about it and you might as well have fun before the AI decides to kill us all
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.
As an example, in a majority of talks there was no time for questions and very little chatter between and around talks. It is like walking in big city, everyone is busy running around.
And questions and comments after talks was what was bringing the most value to the event. Compared to just watch a recording of a talk.
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.
FOSDEM is the Free Open Source Developers European Meetup. It's expected that people from China don't like traveling a long way to Europe. They have other FOS conferences in China.
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!
"But in the end, FOSDEM is not just about talks. It is about meeting people, reconnecting with friends, and having spontaneous conversations that no video stream can fully replace."
I don't go to the talks because they are recorded, it's more about meeting friends around a coffee or a beer.
Maybe in the future, we will have more tables for hacking like at CCC...
Glad to have returned after missing out on FOSDEM for a while. However, I agree with OP on that undeniable success leading to heavy crowding.
I also missed some hacker hardware stands, there were very few this year.
I always enjoyed chatting with people demoing SDR/small cool hardware hacks as a refreshing break from whatever high-tech presentation room I got stuck in for half a day :-)
It would almost be good to ... have a bigger campus.
27 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 73.8 ms ] threadIt’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.
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.
10y ago we had the issue with one of the talks in the IOT devroom which was very "corporate" with one presentation turning into the promotion of a proprietary product.
It's organized by room which you can find here: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/tracks/
Easier to preview content before downloading
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
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.
Why would one at this very moment look with suspicion at a FOSS contributor for the sole reason (s)he's American?
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.
This is also why the EU has a hard time. America prefers the capitalist model. EU is trying to find ways encourage individual developers each with their own interests to contribute to shared European goals (which the devs also share but might not find interesting), and they're trying to do this without directly saying "you there, go and do this", and that's harder than herding cats.
For instance they do it through NLNET funding. Devs can propose projects and the ones the EU wants to fund will receive funding. It's a roundabout way to do things. Let's see if it pays off.
Sounds brilliant. 2024 LLMs were great, and hosted in gigantic datacenters. South Park did an episode on ChatGPT in 2023 to assist with the timescales.
If we can run Free LLMs on a desktop PC that's competitive with 2024 a massive win.
Unless of course you believe that AI will continue to increase exponentially, in which case we're heading for such a different world in 10-15 years that it's meaningless to worry about it and you might as well have fun before the AI decides to kill us all
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.
And questions and comments after talks was what was bringing the most value to the event. Compared to just watch a recording of a talk.
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.
I don't go to the talks because they are recorded, it's more about meeting friends around a coffee or a beer.
Maybe in the future, we will have more tables for hacking like at CCC...
I always enjoyed chatting with people demoing SDR/small cool hardware hacks as a refreshing break from whatever high-tech presentation room I got stuck in for half a day :-)
It would almost be good to ... have a bigger campus.
Tough luck on that though.