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FOSDEM 2025, 2026

FOSDEM26.png A few more weeks to the next FOSDEM conference in Brussels, an annual gathering of thousands of open source developers and users. Time to finally finish some of my notes from last year, and look ahead.

My focus is on socio-technical discussions: how do technologies and society interact with respect to access, representation, and autonomy? Two perspectives:

  • On an individual and community level: how can we reclaim "social media" to be the public space we intended it to be?
  • On a societal and global level: how can we reclaim "open source" as a technical driver for a better society?

Those perspectives touch on a tension between "free" and "open".

  • We have "free software" and online platforms that want to offer "free speech". This usually is about "individual freedom" in absolutist terms, and, paradoxically, leads to the suppression of a lot of voices. The libertarian viewpoint.
  • We also have "open resources", like open source software, open data, digital public goods, and more. These look at "equal opportunity, equal rights" between individuals, groups, and societies. The solidarity/justice viewpoint.

There are common principles and practices across both these approaches. But I think we are at the infamous "fork in the road". Two types of tracks illustrate this: the social web on a community discourse level, and the integration of open source into laws on a policy level.

The Social Web: community norms and connections

Last year, the relatively new Social Web Foundation organised a "devroom" with talks about federated social networks, the Fediverse. This approach supports forming independent communities, each able to define their own norms and values, and choose their own infrastructure.

"Federated" means you can seamlessly engage with people across communities, and, ideally, even switch providers without loosing your content and connections. Just as with modern mobile phone subscriptions.

This approach also lets us go back to the old days when the term "social media" was first coined. You had social platforms for different use cases: sharing photos, longer discussions, travel plans, bookmarks. Maybe I'd like to see your new bookmarks, but not so much what you had for breakfast.

This was a richer "online social fabric" than the monocultures of the Big Tech silos today. With the rise of the Fediverse, this online social fabric is strengthening again, but mostly still at an individual level. It takes some effort to understand and use.

The European Union: policies and law

Last year, it really dawned on me that the European Union had discovered FOSDEM as an excellent opportunity for outreach and engagement with the broader open source community. Right at their doorsteps in Brussels.

And with the increased interest in "digital sovereignty", they have actively looked at opinions on how EU laws and regulations can foster or hinder independent software and technology. The EU not only wants to depend on inputs from the far more well-resourced and organised lobby activities of Big Tech.

Last year, I learned new things about the Open Source AI Definition. It was put together in a broad consultative process, trying to bridge the needs of the open source community with those of lawmakers. It went beyond the (often too simplified) views expressed by fans of open source.

Digital Public Goods and Public Interest Technology

It is difficult to connect the individual choices for autonomy and justice in online social networks to the larger-scale impacts of laws and regulations. But this is at the core of what we call democracy. We can't just have individual freedoms and market capitalism: we need a layer of public institutions and social contracts to shape our norms, values, and justice.

To me, the establishment of Digital Public Goods (DPGs) seems addition to that layer: it moves us beyond the more technical debate about "free or open software", and also looks for instance at governance. (It was nice to see that the IATI Standard and data sets, that I spent almost 15 years working on, was recognised as such a digital public good, recently!)

This governance aspect leads me back to the earlier "free/open" fork in the road. Many "free software" projects still hold on to a "Benevolent Dictator for Life" (BDFL) role for someone. I don't think such a governance structure is compatible with the core values of what a digital public good should be.

"Management by committee" may slow down the speed of innovation, but "management by dictatorship" reduces freedom and justice.

My FOSDEM session bookmarks

I use FOSDEM Companion to bookmark sessions I am interested in. It lets me export my bookmarks to present them here too, so here is my list.

Wordpress as Fediverse instance?

I am very interested in Matthias Pfefferie's "short sneak peek into what we’re currently working on to make WordPress a full flavored, fully featured ActivityPub instance.".

Hopefully, that can work as an interaction back-end for a static website too. I am currently exploring how I could use Wordpress as a stand-alone comments and moderation tool.