@fosdem yesterday, we had our post mortem meeting. Blown up to seven hours straight, and we only got through everything by aggressively skipping and timeboxing -- after(!) moving half of it to the kick-off... Almost twenty people on site in Brussels with half a dozen more calling in.
There's a LOT of details and discussions to running a successful #FOSDEM
Afterwards, we had dinner together
Sticker updates on the fridge after #fosdem and #38c3
#hackerspace
I hear often the argument that we have lost the knowledge in the EU to be independent from the US. That is disinformation of big tech. All of their "innovation" is based on open source software, often written by public research institutions. When you visit #FOSDEM, you are literally at the hotspot of innovation. That knowledge is all around and open. We just need to pick it up and build our own economy around it.
For those who missed my closing talk at #FOSDEM on the #SocialWebFOSDEM track (which was part of the "After Hours" event), I've recorded a standalone version. Feel free to boost for reach - and also share with civic institutions and community leaders. #FediverseForFreedom
Fediverse for Freedom (FOSDEM 2025)
https://makertube.net/videos/watch/58c1b7d8-0667-4b5d-bd00-d72d48ff2630
In this context I would love to share with you a talk from #FOSDEM, which I really enjoyed!
"Lessons Learned from Open Sourcing the UK's Covid Contact Tracing App" by @Edent https://ftp.fau.de/fosdem/2025/janson/fosdem-2025-4411-lessons-learned-open-sourcing-the-uk-s-covid-tracing-app.mp4
I will not post a summary here. If you are interested, just watch it! Congratulations, Terence on what you have achieved with this project. Not only in terms of the project itself, but in terms of FOSS education and perception. Truly impressive!
The videos of the #FOSDEM #EnergyDevroom are live, as published on #LFEnergy blog https://lfenergy.org/videos-from-the-fosdem-2025-energy-devroom-are-now-live/ #Energy
Are you preparing for the weekend? Do you wish to learn more about Rust for Linux, and even look at some driver code? You're in luck, my FOSDEM presentation video is now available:
Rust for Linux: an overview https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-5875-rust-for-linux-an-overview/
Great talk about how to compile your Go! code at #FOSDEM.
https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-4406-build-better-go-release-binaries/
The MapTCHA talk from the FOSDEM Geospatial devroom made the front page of Hacker News.
UI/UX Design Studio Manager Laurel Terlesky's #fosdem talk is online! Explore Thunderbird's journey toward a cohesive, scalable, and data-informed open-source design system that unites desktop, Thunderbird for Android, and beyond.
Can I just say that, the fact that Codeberg has been down for a while now (not their fault of course love Codeberg <3 ),
But the fact that they have been down because LLMs and the whole AI things keeps unethically scraping everything, without consent, without limits to the servers affected by the scraping makes me angry.
What makes me more angry is the fact that we have conferences like FOSDEM, organizations like FSF, OSI and SWH, and linux distros including this unethically sourced models without question and without any kind of concerns. Completely "apolitical" and part of innovation.
If anything it also scares me how many of our collectives, linux distros, conferences, organizations have completely failed us. They say how they are community projects and about Free Software, while enabling wide-spread abuse of consent and resources. More recent example being Codeberg.
What are we going to do as a community here?
From Codeberg:
We are sorry for the inconvenience, but the wild west situation around the AI gold rush has prompted many big players to "simply crawl the web". Their massive resources can cause traffic that is much more than Codeberg can handle. It was a difficult decision for us, but we started to block suspicious traffic more aggressively to keep Codeberg available and performant to most of our users. And your traffic was also suspicious to us.
I'd like to nominate Ryan Lee (not on Mastodon) for the "Most Entertaining" category in the #fosdemawards for his #fosdem talk "Bamboozling Badly Behaved Bots":
https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-4933-bamboozling-badly-behaving-bots/
(Seriously, go give it a watch - it's a Lightning Talk, so not too long, and it's lots of fun)
Any other nominations for this category, or for other award categories? Winners will be selected by Al and the prizes are free hugs at next FOSDEM (can be exchanged for hearty handshakes and/or serious salutes).
Two weeks! Two. Whole. WEEKS!
As of 30 minutes ago, the published videos from #FOSDEM 2025 have more than TWO WEEKS OF TOTAL RUNTIME!
If you sat down on day 1 in the morning and started watching videos all day every day, no breaks and no sleep, you would still be watching by the time we're sitting down for the Post Mortem in Brussels next Saturday noon. And we still have 100+ videos left to finish.
Largest #OpenSource conference on Earth.
Saw a fantastic talk at #FOSDEM or in one of the videos? Let the presenter know by clicking the feedback link on the schedule. Saw a fantastic speaker or talk that you think should belong on the main track next year? Submit it via https://fosdem.org/suggest/ #fosdem2025 #fosdem2026
Did you miss the panel talk on Forked Communities: Project Re-licensing and Community Impact at #FOSDEM? Our own @binford2k joined @geekygirldawn, @TheTechScribe, and Stephen Walli to chat about what happens when companies take projects private. https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-5258-forked-communities-project-re-licensing-and-community-impact/