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Fosdem 2026 recap

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation_5#SPARCstation_4
This year I was lucky again and was able to attend FOSDEM. This turned out to be more of a social conference than a technical one for me this year. I mean:  I had a bunch of really great conversations, with peers and users of Firefox. I was there to man the Mozilla booth. The idea was to engage people and have them fill up a bingo, in exchange they might go back home with a T-shirt a baseball cap or a pair of socks. Most people that I saw on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. Some people complained about AI, but not as many as I was expecting. Explaining why and that https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/02/firefox-will-soon-let-you-block-all-of-its-generative-ai-features/ would soon be available made them all understand and think that they could keep Firefox as their main browser. Our sticker stock melts like snow under the sun. The people from mozilla.ai had some pretty interesting discussions with some users that came by the booth. 

When the FOSDEM schedule got published, I got exited by the fact that the Mozilla room had been renamed the web browser room. Inclusion done the right, the best way to push for an open web. That dev room was located in the room that had historically served the Mozilla community back in 2004/2005/2006/2007 ... Unfortunately, I woke up 30m past Midnight on Saturday and was unable to get back to sleep. The sessions I had intended to watch were just at the time I got a big tired / want to sleep feeling. This was also true for the other room I was interested in : the BSD dev room.

Last but not least, as I had helped organize the Search dev room, a very nice recap was posted on LinkedIn.  I was doing the MC in that room. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot.

Remember you can view, see again dev room content as they are appearing to videos.fodem.org. You can retrieve more slides from the schedule of the talks like here https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/B7BVVJ-eliza_rewriting_the_original_ai_chatbot_from_60_years_bc_before_chatgpt/, videos are being processed and are not yet all available. If you like a talk or disliked one, make sure to leave feedback.

This year the conference was a social event. I've met plenty of "old" or not so old friend. I've counted 33 people, not counting my previous manager and her daughter. I know I have missed at least 3 people. Very nice conversation with many of these people. I really was a pleasure to meet and interact. 

 The highlight of this FOSDEM was seeing he Sun sparc station 4 on one of the stands. 

 

More Photos from another Mozillian, https://www.flickr.com/photos/202973669@N04/albums/72177720331827377/ 

 

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Comments

Jonathan Lin said…
Great recap! Glad you got to meet both new people and people you knew! I was thinking of going, but travel plans didn't line up this year. Maybe 2027?!
3:00 AM
Ludovic Hirlimann said…
I have pressured Roland to come next year. If you come make sure to check out the fringe events
8:00 PM
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