Skip to Content

Heard and Seen at FOSDEM 2017

Posted on by Dimitri Merejkowsky 3 mins read

Last weekend I attended FOSDEM 2017 in Brussels, Belgium.

Here are, in no particular order, things I heard and seen while being there.

Stuff on slides #

Access for refugees: A government task, but the Freifunk community fixed it. (link)

We provide free Internet access, so that they can use their money for food and family and not for prepaid internet dealers (link)

“How many likes did I get” are the new slot machines of the Internet. (link)

I got kicked out of university after delivering a brilliant lecture on the aggressive influence of German philosophy on rock and roll entitled: You, Kant, Always Get What You Want.

— John Cameron Mitchell (link)

Quotes #

I was working in a big company, so nobody here wanted to write code that actually worked.

We help our users leave our service if they want to go for an alternative of what we do.

When they do leave, we party. (link)

From an English-speaking point of view it’s hard to keep up with all the awesome stuff you are doing in France

Is that an implementation of the CHATONS protocol? More info about C.H.A.T.O.N.S on framablog (in French)

If you come contributing to YunoHost, expect French. Don’t worry, it’s not a disease. (link)

Scenes #

Resurrecting Dinosaurs, what could possibly go wrong? link

SPEAKER: I did not expect to have a win32 architecture slide here at FOSDEM


You know what's cool? Running on billions of devices link

QUESTION: Have you been approached by a government agency to introduce a backdoor?

ANSWER: Well, if I had I could not tell you. I suggest you go read the code, and if you find one, please let me know.


Unbreakable Unit Tests link

SPEAKER: Who here is using TDD?

Half the audience raises their hand

SPEAKER: Who here has been doing that for more than five years?

An other guy and I raise our hands

I feel old


Understanding The Complexity of Copyleft Defense link

BRADLEY M. KUHN: Copyleft is a strategy

…

Community-oriented enforcement must never prioritize financial gain.

…

So, I encourage you to wake up, demand your copyrights back, and use the licensing strategy you think is best for long-term software freedom.


[freifunk] Access is a human right link

German presenter starts talking

French organizer tell him to wait 40 seconds because the recording is not ready

PRESENTER: Timing is strict here

ORGANIZER: Well, we’re a bit German. And I mean that in a good way


Let's de-Google-ify the Internet link

SPEAKER: You just need a web browser, so please use Firefox

Crowd applause


libre.sh helps you to host your FLOSS link

In the middle of a live demo

Types a command on the terminal

Console gets flooded with warning messages

SPEAKER: You can safely ignore these warnings

Everyone laughs


Puffin: Free Webapp Hosting for Average Users link

SPEAKER: Let’s start with a demo

Clicks the register button

Enters the ’login’ field

Lots of suggestions are displayed: ’test’, ’test1’, ’test2’, …

Types ’test6'

Everyone laughs


FreedomBox, liberty inside the cloud link

QUESTION: Are you going to include an e-mail client and server in the freedombox distribution?

ANSWER: Well, no. I think certain things need to die at some point.


And, last but not least:

FOSDEM in a nutshell #

Decentralized Internet devroom link

TRISTAN NITOT: The room is full at 9 AM on a Sunday morning after a short night, a long evening and probably too many beers. Thanks for coming!


See you next year!

Thanks for reading this far :)

I'd love to hear what you have to say, so please feel free to leave a comment below, or read the contact page for more ways to get in touch with me.

Note that to get notified when new articles are published, you can either:

Cheers!