FOSDEM 2026 feebacks by people close to the podcast
Walid : Today, it’s a little bit special, much shorter, whose purpose is to give you a feedback on FOSDEM.
So FOSDEM is the big fair for free software developers that is held in Brussels every year. This year, it was January 31 and February 1. It’s the big show in our ecosystem where there are between 8,000 and 9,000 people. And so today, I asked a few people around me to give me a quick feedback on their impressions of FOSDEM to give you an idea of how it went and also what kind of audience we meet.
To begin with, the first feedback is that of Virginie Dewulf, who is a member of the OCA (the Odoo Community Association). I did an episode, if you will, on this: season 2, episode 21.
Virginie : Hello everyone, I’m Virginie. I work as an open source consultant, but also now as an accountant using free software. I am very active in the OCA community, Odoo Community Association. If you want to know more, there’s a very good episode that Walid did two years ago about our open source project. This year, I went to FOSDEM, a bit like, not every year, but almost every year for almost 18 years. I live in Brussels, so it’s very easy for me to get there.
What I love about FOSDEM is to see how the city is full of geeks and also not so geeky people who gather to meet at the University of Brussels. The trams and buses are completely full the days before, the two weekend days too. And so, it’s very funny to go to the cafes that are in the neighborhoods around the university and say: “hey, are you going to FOSDEM?” And obviously, we spot them right away, the people who go to FOSDEM: they have great t-shirts, they have great sweaters. Well, then, it’s a bit cliché, but there’s also everything. There are really everything and more and more women from one year to the next, I think, personally.
What I like about FOSDEM is that there are not only technical discussions, so there are discussion rooms that organize conferences throughout the day. There are some that I don’t even understand the name but there are others where it’s much more accessible for people who are not developers. And so what I really like to listen to is the community dev room that talks about how to animate open source communities, that talks about “We talk about problems in open source communities” with a lot of testimonies. This year, there were discussions about what to do in the case of contributors who are trying to bring contributions based on generative artificial intelligence. And so, it was quite interesting to see that it’s not only in our community that we ask ourselves these kinds of questions, that there are things that exist. So, it also allows us to be inspired for the projects in which we are active. There is also often the room on “How to finance open source?” which interests me quite a bit, but this year, I couldn’t go.
Another very cool aspect of FOSDEM, I think, is the fact that there are lots of booths. And so, all the open source projects that have been able to get a stand are present everywhere in the auditoriums, around the conference rooms. And there, it’s also crazy to see the mass of people who circulate and try to reach certain stands that are very popular. I think there are people who make some kind of sticker collections and who go everywhere to get them. But myself, I did a few laps of the stands and it’s very funny to hear people present their projects, to realize that it goes in all directions. I went to see all the booths on the open hardware side that I don’t know so much and to see that I could connect my thermostatic valves of my radiators to free software, obviously, I’m interested. Even if it still seems very far away to me, but I think there will be a way thanks to a lot of tools that are created by the different communities.
So there you go, I think it’s something to see at least once in your life. It’s full of people, full of good humor, full of energy really. And so it’s also for women, it’s also for people who aren’t hyper-technical. And then it’s also an opportunity to cross paths, to go for a drink. there is a way to meet people and have fun in all simplicity so I invite you to come and see FOSDEM with your own eyes.
Walid: Second comeback, Alex Hoyau is the founder of Silex. Silex, if you want to know more, listen to episode 12 of season 3.
Alex : Hi, Alex Hoyau from Silex. I was at FOSDEM recently. And I was there a bit by chance. I was not very far away. I thought, “Okay, this is your chance.” And I proposed a conference, which was accepted in the form of a workshop. So I received people in what they call a BOF, an “unconference”. It’s a pretty funny concept. So I went to see others, by the way. And it’s always very nice, because we expect everyone to talk. He’s not really an expert in front of people who listen to him, it’s more like exchanges. So it was very nice, that part. As a result, we find ourselves talking to people. It’s easier to make contact than to go to a conference.
And then what else? There are things that struck me. People are all very different. There are really a lot of different styles of people. That’s quite pleasant. We talk a lot about non-technical subjects, but with a very technical approach, in any case very down-to-earth. And so, it goes from the community, the governance, the business model, the licenses, all the things that revolve around what we do. It seems to be everyone’s favorite subjects, but with a very pragmatic approach. There is no one trying to sell or impose their point of view. It’s really more in the exchange. Everyone tries to take the opinions of others more than to impose their own.
And that’s kind of what struck me. In any case, the confs I saw, there were slides that were still very full. that is to say, it does not respect the standards of a normal presentation at all. People were talking a little under their breath and everything, it felt like the thing… But everyone was happy with it. People weren’t necessarily nervous. These are people who are used to public speaking and everything. But you can see that it’s raw. There you go. Take me as I am and that’s it. So that’s kind of the spirit of the conference. And it’s reinforced by this slightly intellectually side of the university, where you’re in a big university with buildings that are a bit old school and everything. It was very nice. And then Brussels is great. Transport, everything was easy, everything was simple and free. There was food on site. There were lots of places where you could sit down. I even saw people watching the lectures on their computer in a room when there was space and you could go live, but they preferred to watch it on video. And there you have it, a lot of people who are doing small projects too, who are starting to program on the side. So I recommend, there you go.
Walid: The third feedback is that of Raphaël Semeteys, who is co-host of the podcast.
Raphaël : I’m Raphaël Semeteys. I went to FOSDEM because it’s really an event where you can feel the whole, the heart of self-sourcing in Europe and in the world. It’s really a collaborative collective, I love it, it’s been a long time since I’ve been there and now I think I’ll do it regularly.
The conferences that interested me the most were in the social web part, especially one on Mastodon where there were people from Mastodon who explained what they were doing and why they were taking the time to do it well and that we had to be patient. I like the fact that they say we are aware that we cannot become a central point of the Fediverse, it is that we favor the emergence of knots and the mesh. So it was interesting to see this vision, how they organized themselves to do it.
And then, lots of discussions with a lot of people and in fact, that’s really why for me FOSDEM is unique, it’s really about the meetings, the discussions. Of course, there are conferences, it’s really the people who make open source and with whom we can discuss. We have lots of ideas, lots of new encounters, lots of new ideas and it’s extraordinary, it’s an atmosphere, I don’t know how many people in FOSDEM, it’s a lot of people, it’s between nine and ten thousand people, I think. An event of this size that goes so smoothly, everything is but everyone is cool, well really, I really love it. An event that I highly recommend and if you are afraid of the crowd it doesn’t matter there is always a way to find places if there are unlikely conferences in which I have found myself by letting myself be guided just like that, by the flow. And we learn completely crazy things. There are people who are doing extraordinary things just by chance. And that, too, is the strength of FOSDEM.
Walid: The fourth feedback is that of Alex Bourreau, who is a contributor to OpenFoodFacts. OpenFoodFacts, we talked about it in season 2, in episodes 14 and 16.
Alex : Hi, I’m Alex. This year, I went to FOSDEM for two main reasons. To meet and see a little bit of what was being done on the side of the Dev Room Transport and to present a project to which I contribute called OpenPrices, in the OpenFoodFacts galaxy. Paradoxically, the conference that made the biggest impression on me wasn’t in those circles, it was in the DevRoom Community. it was a conference presented by a researcher called Miranda Heath who talked about burnout in open source. She was, beyond the subject, which is an important subject, the way she presented was like a story that was being told, so it was really great.
Overall, the conference is quite special when compared to other conferences or other meetings around programming for example or open source, it’s quite unique. We’re in an ecosystem that knows each other quite well, that shares the basics a little bit, so there’s no need to recall the initial concepts of why we do this, what is open source, etc. Everyone is already a bit of an expert and convinced of these collaborative and tech subjects, but on the other hand, and what is even more obvious, is that there is little individuality in this conference, we really talk about projects, we don’t talk about people, no one wears a badge for example, it’s a bit like open source in fact, it’s anonymous, it’s online, everyone has their own nickname and we’re more there to talk about projects, so the verdict at FOSDEM when you meet someone, you talk to them about your passion, things like that, and then you don’t end up with a scan of a QR code that goes to a LinkedIn or something like that. There are no contacts in the end, which are really made at the end of the conversation, I think it’s related to the fact that people trust each other on the fact that if the project is interesting and that it is well identified, we will be able to find quite easily where it was via GitHub, etc. since things are finally quite standardized in open source, it’s quite easy to find the people even if we does not have their name. I think that on the whole it’s still quite related to the type of audience there, they’re still introverted developers who don’t necessarily always have the classic social codes of the usual type of conference but I think that’s what we like at FOSDEM.
Walid: And finally, the return of Laurent Destailleur who is a Dolibarr ERP CRM maintainer. Laurent was the first guest of the podcast.
Laurent : Hi Walid, so why did you participate in FOSDEM? For two main reasons. The first is to present the open source business management software Dolibarr to an audience other than the French-speaking public, since FOSDEM is a trade fair that is very popular with non-French-speakers, so English, Dutch and German as well. So it allows us to target an audience with whom the Dolibarr project is a little less popular. And then the other reason is to meet the other players in major open source projects. Even if, to be honest, there are so many people who came to the stand that I didn’t have much time to walk around, but it’s postponed for next year.
Otherwise, for the record, among all the visitors who passed by the Dolibarr stand, there was a bit of a particular one who asked me about Dolibarr for a long time. And the questions went a little beyond the usual questions, which are: is Dolibarr ready for e-invoicing? Yes, can Dolibarr interface with the Peppol network? [See the episode on e-invoicing]. Yes, etc. But it was more about the governance of the project, the operation, the internal meanderings, etc. And the conversation lasted a little longer than with any other visitor. And at the end of this exchange, it turns out that I was sharing the booth with the OCA, so the Odoo Community Association, and then, Hugues [Damry] said to me, who represented the Odoo Community Association, he said to me “Do you know who you just talked to there?” I said “No.” And he said to me “Actually, you just spoke for more than a quarter of an hour with the CTO of OdooSo that’s it, so it’s funny because that’s the kind of thing that only in FOSDEM can you have this kind of adventure.
Walid: A little feedback from FOSDEM on my side. I remember that it was a good edition. I have the impression that there were as many people as usual, it was very nice to see people again, some that we only see at FOSDEM, others that we can meet regularly, to also take time with some of the guests we were able to meet and discuss at some length.
The striking things, I remember two things. The first is that there is a conference on site that interested me a lot in the transport dev room on the state of open data in transport in the Czech Republic. It was super interesting to see that the person really struggled, that he had to go through the Czech court, then the European court to recover data and that even through that, the data he recovered is incomplete. And remotely, because I’ve watched a lot of conferences since FOSDEM, I especially remember the conference on PostMarketOS, the whole hardware testing system that they have set up to be able to test PostmarketOS, so Linux mobile OS, on physical phones. I think it’s really interesting to see what they were able to do and what they presented on their stand at FOSDEM.
That’s all for these feedbacks, we hope you liked it, don’t hesitate to circulate, talk about it around you and if you liked it maybe we’ll do more at other shows who knows, see you soon.
Episode production
- Separate remote recording for each guest
- Editing: Walid Nouh
- Transcript: Walid Nouh
This interview has been automatically translated from the original language into English.
License
This podcast is released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license or later