FOSDEM 2026 – Open-Source Conference in Brussels – Day#1 Recap

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!

"nobody younger than 40 was attending"

Hmmm, I was there and this is definitely not true.

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 £5 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.

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.