FOSDEM open source conference in on in Brussels today. There are 1093 events on. Yes I had to double check that number. FOSDEM 2025 - Events
I can’t attend in person, but most if not all talks are livestreamed.
I can’t wait to move from my little island to the continent and attend next year!
I watched the ‘community’ room yesterday, and I am watching the ‘open source in the European legislative landscape’ today.
From the community and European streams, my biggest takeaway was that the CRM, which some claim to be a big problem for open source development in Europe, is in fact appropriate legislation to ensure ‘secure by design’ software. The CRM will not apply to non-commercial software, and is entirely appropriate to apply to commercial open source as there are HUGE players using and developing open source that are entirely appropriate to regulate.
There was good talk on standards (think ISO) and the only round of applause I heard was to a speaker saying that non-free standards are ‘stupid’. Standards should be available to everybody.
The area discussed that I am particularly interested in was digital sovereignty. France, Germany and the Netherlands are making great strides here developing interoperable systems.
Examples: