Projets Libres joins LinuxFr.org!
Sommaire
Walid: Dear listeners, welcome to this special episode which was recorded live at the Open Source Experience show in Paris on Thursday, December 18, 2025 during the conference called the associal Club, which is the community conference organized by LinuxFr.org. I’ll leave you with this short excerpt that talks about the future of the Free Projects podcast. Enjoy reading
Florent: And so, breaking news, LinuxFr.org is getting into podcasting, for those who don’t know! So LinuxFr, a collaborative website for information and news on free software in contributory mode, under a free license. So don’t hesitate to come and contribute, but we said to ourselves, we’re going to do audio, because we have to diversify a little, we have to renew ourselves. So, why, where, when, how? We will try to answer these questions.
We’ll start with the how. So, we looked at it, we did a little benchmark. We said to ourselves, do we do it ourselves? Do we look at what exists? Who are the good ones? Who are the worst performers? And so, we said to ourselves: “merger, acquisition, FUSAC!”. We’re going to launch a big FUSAC. We said to ourselves, and we made an offer, you can’t resist.
And so there, we said: “the best is Projets Libres”. Sorry for Libre à vous but the best are Projets Libres. So Projets Libres and LinuxFr.org are joining forces to now offer podcasts. And so Projets Libres becomes the official podcast of LinuxFr.org! What I propose is to take a good 5 minutes 5-10 minutes to do a short interview with the president of LinuxFr Benoît Sibaud and on the bearer of the podcast Projets Libres, Walid Nouh.
Get there, each take a microphone. I’m going to give you the microphone, there are only two, it’s okay, I’m going to ask you two short questions, we’re not going to make it too long because there’s the quiz behind it.
Why the merger?
Florent: First of all, the little question Benoît, why? And also why in two minutes each.
Benoit: It’s easy: you noticed that we are an association of volunteers and thanks to our great treasurer and our innate sense of how to generate money, we are able to have lots of sponsors who offer a lot of stuff and to exist since 1998.
We thought, “yes, OK, we have an online website, we’re able to do text, we’re able to have images. It turns out, we can enter the new millennium and get into audio, an innovative thing, and continue our conquest of the French-speaking world.” That’s when the idea was born. We said to ourselves: “yes, that’s what we have to do. Mergers and acquisitions are the future. And nothing will stop us now, we’re gone, we’re at full speed.”
Walid: You sell it well anyway (laughs). On the LinuxFr… It’s already gone… On the Projets Libres side, it’s much simpler. The podcast has been around for two and a half years. And we started getting questions like, “Okay, who are you?” “What is it?” “How does it work?” So we said to ourselves, with Raphaël, we’re both working together on the podcast, we’re going to set up an association, yet another free software association.
The idea behind it was also to somehow get donations and to be able to make the podcast that started two and a half years ago last a little longer. And in a totally fortuitous way, in a discussion, which was not yet a merger-acquisition, with the Florent here, we mentioned the idea that we wanted to set up an association and he said to us “in fact why do you want to set up an association? We have one, it’s there.”
And so I say hello to a person called Nÿco aka Nicolas Vérité who I met on roller skating spots 20 years ago and who gave me my first Linux Mandrake CDs, which was already part of LinuxFr at the time I think and so in a way it’s thanks to him that we’re here so that’s kind of why we’re here.
Benoit: And since they do a great job and their podcasts are really great, congratulations for all the work that has been done, welcome to the family.
What to expect now?
Florent: And so second quick question before we continue, how is it going to be done concretely, What to expect?
Walid: Should we answer this question? No, concretely, in the coming hours and days, we will put a first logo a little more representative of the rapprochement and then, we will think about the way we cross-reference the content since LinuxFr is already one of our main sources when we prepare podcasts. So now, the idea, in the coming months, will be to think about how to integrate the podcast more finely through LinuxFr is not yet completely defined
Benoit: Overall, we will improve the display and visibility part, give links to each other, have logos that represent this. And then we’re not starting from scratch, we’re already relaying the podcasts, we’re generally relaying the transcriptions that there may be on the podcasts, we already have news on it, the idea is to go a step further, to facilitate this multimedia part, to have the text, the audio all available, so that we can find it by the same means and to make it much easier.
It’s true for access to content, it’s true to make life easier for the podcast, it’s true at the level of the association, it’s convenient to be able to manage, not need to create a separate association, it’s already a help, it allows you to launch projects and do things more easily and it’s also true in terms of ideas, abilities to help each other and to produce things together, We have text and a history over many years.
Walid: And a community.
Benoit: Podcasts are super interesting as a means of communication. We have a lot of content that we can promote in this way. We have lots of ways to work together and all we have to do is do it.
Walid: Just to finish, community is important. What you have to understand is that podcasts, as we do them, that is to say with a remote recording, we talk about them a lot with Raphaël, but it remains a work that is very, how can I put it, very solitary.
And here, the idea is to also be able to benefit from the entire writing system, news that is written in a collaborative way, to try to enrich the podcast, to find ideas, even to make news through audio that we would have made. So there you go, there are a lot of different things that we will be able to do. So we’re super happy. And then for those who don’t know the podcast, I don’t know if there are already people listening to the podcast here. Yes, we can…
Florent: And last question my dear Walid in terms of sound design, are you going to do something specific or not?
Walid: So we’re going to redo the sound design that dates back two and a half years, so it needs to be redone and the sound design is going to be most likely the song you just heard from KPTN.
Florent: That’s the power of free software and free licenses.
Walid: And you can donate now on EnVenteLibre.org for the podcast
Florent: In the meantime, you still need a contract, it’s no joke there…
Walid: We signed a non-disclosure agreement before the start
Florent: there is still a merger and acquisition
Benoît: we have confidence in the treasurer
Florent: The treasurer offers you [chocolate coins]…
Walid: I’m rich now
Florent: for the purchase of the podcast
To go further
- The announcement of the merger
- The website of Clément Oudot alias KPTN
- The episode of Projets Libres on the 25th anniversary of LinuxFR.org
- The Open Source Experience 2025
Episode production
- Live recording on December 11, 2025 at the Open Source Experience (OSXP)
- Preparation: Florent Zara
- Editing: Walid Nouh
- Transcript: Walid Nouh
License
This podcast is released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license or later