71–80 of 251 posts
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/
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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 rece…
> 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 t…
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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. No…
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 withou…
"our hacker-minded spaces"
Spaces full of people.
"once clean, apolitical world-of-mind"
This only ever existed for select few people.
> 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 y…
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…
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.
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 hea…
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.)…
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.
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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…
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. No…
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 soft…
It’s not clear what you want them to do instead.
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
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 soft…
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.
> 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 y…
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 “…
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.
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It’s not clear what you want them to do instead.
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, (probab…