| ▲ | fvdessen 11 hours ago |
| I for one found this event really sad. It's like the OSS community has rejected the past 5 years of software and technological changes and now choses to live in a retro computing bubble. We're in 2026, hardware is made in dark factories in shenzhen in fully automated assembly lines by the million of units. Software is written using LLMs hosted in gigantic datacenters. Millions of people are now writing their own software with vibe coding platforms from their phones What is the FOSDEM community's answer to the real concerns that these changes pose ? Let's hand solder raspberry pis ! let's self host LLMS from 2 years ago on FreeBSD ! Look, i can run wasn linux on this risc-v cpu ! These takes are completely out of touch with reality, no wonder that nobody younger than 40 was attending the conference. The next generation is doing something else and rightly so. |
|
| ▲ | benou 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > What is the FOSDEM community's answer to the real concerns that these changes pose ? Let's hand solder raspberry pis ! let's self host LLMS from 2 years ago on FreeBSD ! Look, i can run wasn linux on this risc-v cpu ! Maybe, just maybe, they're having fun? FOSS is not only about corporate open-source, but also genuine curiosity. Both can have their place. > no wonder that nobody younger than 40 was attending the conference. The next generation is doing something else and rightly so. I saw a lot of students at FOSDEM, attending, presenting and helping the at organization. |
| |
| ▲ | fvdessen 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | OSS original point wasn't just to have fun among nerds, but to have a real impact on the world. Fun and curiosity is fine, but there's a line where it becomes a tech themed larp event, and FOSDEM is trending towards the later. Corporate Open Source should have its place at FOSDEM. The linux dinosaur companies such as Redhat are still there. But what about the new ones ? What about Mistral, Odoo ? Even the 'evil' ones such as facebook, github, etc, aren't they contributing a lot of open software ? Aren't they more relevant than let's say Olimex ? There were some students, yes but the attendence is growing old, and the chit chat is more about 'remember this and that' than 'we're building the future' | | |
| ▲ | ignoramous 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | Looking at the talk lineup of a LLM related devroom, it sounds forward looking to me: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/track/ai/ > but to have a real impact on the world. I did find devrooms, stands, and main track talks on this. > Even the 'evil' ones such as facebook, github, etc, aren't they contributing a lot of open software Google is one of the two lead financial sponsors of FOSDEM (the other being RedHat). So clearly, there doesn't seem to be any restriction or judgement by the organizers on whether BigTech is 'evil'. I get that Jack Dorsey (of Square/Block) withdrew his main track talk the year prior, which was unfortunate. > the chit chat is more about 'remember this and that' than 'we're building the future' Well, for better or for worse, FOSDEM is not exclusively a tech start-up event. | | |
| ▲ | fvdessen 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Looking at the talk lineup of a LLM related devroom, it sound forward looking to me: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/track/ai/ It doesn't to me at all, it is mainly focused on self hosting llms, which is a complete deadend. It just isn't feasible to self host the useful models, the hardware requirements are just too big. The current topic of focus around AI are: how to adapt development practice to agentic coding, agent harness, agent orchestration, mcp integrations, etc. I guess there is some unease in the oss community to rely on large companies to run and host the models. But this isn't entirely new, we also relied on big companies to manufacture our computers. It's just the way it is. > Well, for better or for worse, FOSDEM is not a tech start-up event. It is weird, there are a lot of startups present, look at all the stands showcasing projects. Aren't those startups ? What I noticed is that they are usually funded by public grants rather than VCs. I am not sure why this is the case. |
|
|
|
|
| ▲ | guerby 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| "nobody younger than 40 was attending" Hmmm, I was there and this is definitely not true. |
|
| ▲ | mixmastamyk 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It’s not clear what you want them to do instead. |
| |
| ▲ | fvdessen 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | Have an AI track focused on how to use AI to improve OSS software instead of how to run LLama on RISC-V. Invite the open source developpers behind popular OSS AI frameworks such as opencode, etc. Invite talkers from large companies that produce open source software and models such as Mistral.AI Invite talkers from companies that run OSS LLMs at scale such as groq Invite the people who build drones in Ukraine, (probably the most succesful open hardware story to date). Have drone building workshops / drone piloting stands | | |
| ▲ | mixmastamyk 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's been ~three years now we've been hearing about "AI" non-stop. Am a bit tired of it to be honest. | | |
| ▲ | charcircuit 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | But the AI talked about 3 years ago are not the same kind of projects that are being talked about today. It's rapidly evolving. There is a lot of new scope available for new open source projects to take. This isn't open source reimplementing the same thing for 3 years straight. | |
| ▲ | fvdessen 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It is extremely exhausting, but it's also the biggest change in tech since the invention of the internet. It don't think it can be ignored. | | |
| ▲ | bigstrat2003 22 minutes ago | parent [-] | | That's certainly what the companies who stand to profit want us to believe. But I don't think it is. I think it's yet another hype storm without any actual utility to back it up. |
|
| |
| ▲ | benou 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Anyone can propose a devroom for FOSDEM, I hope you'll do it next year :) | | |
|
|
|
| ▲ | throw567643u8 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > What is the FOSDEM community's answer to the real concerns that these changes pose ? I only caught half a dozen talks, and two of them talked about this exact point. |
| |
|
| ▲ | anthk 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| LLM turds will degrade more and more over time. The newbies will become even dumber and people with actual knowledge will be several steps over anthing else trained to copy and paste from bullshitters. |
| |
| ▲ | protocolture 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah man. Just like how novel reading, newspapers, music, rock music, the internet, computer games all made everyone super dumb and the world ended. I am definitely sure that this time you are right and the world will actually end this time, everyones going to end up way dumber than you, or if they dont, you will still pretend it happened and be smug about it on the internet. | |
| ▲ | eMPee584 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Would you mind showing some compassion for the unintelligent, it's none of their fault.. It's incentives, sociodynamics and manifold other preconditions that bring about these symptoms. |
|
|
| ▲ | positron26 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Totally. People who feel this way, please get in touch with me. https://positron.solutions Where I'm going is in the complete opposite direction, making paths for consumer demand to get into the software and form a real two-way relationship between the programming & support and users who just want to put money in and get stuff out. |
