I know it’s like a month+ since FOSDEM was (again), but I got the famous FOSDEM-flu and have been busy aswell.. BUT, finally I’ve had the time to finish this post!

New year, new FOSDEM! This year we were a group of eight friByters’ travelling to FOSDEM together this year, so the tradition has officially become a thing (i hope) :party:

This year I started my travels from Oslo as I had been in a client meeting the past two days, so I arrived earlier than most of the group. This was nice as me and another friByter had the opportunity to walk around Brussels a bit and eat some french fries.

For this years FOSDEM I came better prepared I had created a better schedule for which talks to attend, as I remembered my lessons from last years mistake - even though I still missed some :sweat_smile: During this two-day long conference, there is around 1000+ talks, so there’s something for everyone! Even though you might miss something, there’s always something new to check out. See here for program saturday, and here for program sunday.

Saturday

Saturday started of by me just walking around campus and checking out the stands. Besides hoarding stickers, I bought myself a Nix-necklace which was cool. I like the stands, it’s cool to see the people behind the software I use and talk with them about it.

Here’s some of the talks I went to:

• Cascading Spy Sheets: The Privacy&Security Implications of CSS in Emails: This was such a cool talk, learnt a lot more about the possibilities of explots within email by using CSS.
• From Policy To Practice; Open Source in The Dutch Government: One of the more exciting talks I went to, they talked about how Europe need to regain control of our digital environment, from infrastructure to apps, how they are going with an “Open, Unless”-mindset -> reminded me a lot about NAV in Norway, and a bit about their own office-suite “Mijn Bureau” - kinda like OpenDesk. I liked how they mentioned that tech is not the challenge, it’s the government that needs to get out of its own way.

As I’m still a Nix-noob, it was fun to watch some of the talks within the room!

• libre.sh 9 years later, how Nix is used in an integrated platform powering digital sovereignty: I want to learn Kubernetes so much, and using Nix with it sounded super nice!
• Eilean: Self-hosted digital islands: I like the idea of centralising our presence under our own self-hosted hubs!
• TAPPaaS: A resilient, trusted, automated private cloud based on NixOS: Again, automating a private cloud for homes, communities and small orgs using NixOS for this as a solution sounded cool! I like these visions, excited of what’s yet to come.

In the end, I didn’t get to see that many talks because I bled a lot of noseblood that day, so I called it quits after the TAPPaaS-talk in the Nix-room due to being so tired. On the way home the craziest thing happened aswell, a guy right across the walkway got hit by a car. I participated in helping until the ambulance came - such a wild thing to see happen - hopefully the guy made a full recovery, he looked okay when they drove away.

Sunday

A new day to hoard more stickers! Well, we woke up late this day so I missed both The day in a life of a SBOM and Four Year Bus, but then I made my way to the “SBOMS and supply chains”-room for some talks and I was pretty satisfied at the end of the day.

For the SBOM talks, I learned so much new about SBOMs. I liked how the CRA-Ready SBOMs: A Practical Blueprint for High-Quality Generation showed the way from nothing to something in regards to compliance, as well as how he SBOM generation steps are much more than just creating the report. The Deutsche Bahn’s Approach to Large-Scale SBOM Collection and Use-talk was also interesthing. I liked seeing how other big companies in other countries are utilizing open source! Seeing how they centralized the SBOM inventory to get an overview over all the projects was pretty cool. I also sat through the How public administrations are shifting their software supply chain paradigms - and why now-talk, but I was kinda distracted due to being hungry and such - but still an interesting talk.

After the being finished in the SBOMS-room I went on to go to a lot of different rooms after having lunch, so I could watch some of the miscellaneous talks I wanted to see.

• Headscale & Tailscale: The complementary open source clone: Cool to hear more about Headscale and how it originated. I love using it for my homelab!
• Why build an 8-bit homebrew computer in 2026: Such a cool talk, loved to hear the story behind the build. It looked so cool, sucks that they couldn’t get the slides up - but the speaker nailed the talk anyways!
• Independent and sustainable audio publishing with Faircamp: Had to go watch Simon Repps talk about Faircamp even though I don’t use it. I’m using one of his other projects - Hyper8 at /preview. Love his work.
• Closing FOSDEM 2026: I actually got a seat inside here, even though the place was completely filled. The FOSDEM dance is an important cherry-on-top for ending the conference, so I need to see it. The organizators mentioned at the end that we need to fight for our democracies, and without them free and open software will stop being relevant.

Satisfied and can’t wait for next year!

All in all, I’m yet again very satisfied with this years FOSDEM, and I’m already ready for next years. I learn a lot, even though I know a lot also went over my head, but that’s a part of it!

Additionally, I liked how the opening talk mentioned how important free and open source software is, and that “if we lose our democracies, Open Source is irrelevant and goes away”. It shows how technology is an important part of today’s political system, and that technology isn’t a neutral party.

PS: Next year I’m bringing a mask, I don’t want to catch the FOSDEM flu again lol