What is FOSDEM? 

FOSDEM is a free and non-commercial event organised by the community for the community. The goal is to provide open source software developers and communities a place to meet to:

• get in touch with other developers and projects;
• be informed about the latest developments in the open source world;
• attend interesting talks and presentations on various topics by open source project leaders and committers;
• to promote the development and the benefits of open source solutions.

Participation and attendance is totally free, though the organisers gratefully accept donations and sponsorship.

Developer rooms

The FOSDEM team feels it is very important for open source software developers around the world to be able to meet in “real life”.

To this end, we have set up developer rooms (devrooms) with network/internet connectivity and projectors where teams can meet and showcase their projects. Devrooms are a place for teams to discuss, hack and publicly present latest directions, lightning talks, news and discussions. We believe developers can benefit a lot from these meetings.

Last year, there were more than 160 talks in the Developer Rooms in addition to the many main-track talks, the lightning talks, the LPI exams and the PGP/CAcert keysigning events.

A bit of history

In 2000, Raphael Bauduin, a fan of the Linux movement in Belgium, decided to organise a small meeting for developers of Open Source software. He called it 'Open Source Developers’ European Meeting' (OSDEM).

Raphael created a mailing list, a small website and spread the word to people around him. Only a few weeks later, lots of people were waiting for an exciting event in Brussels! Invitations were sent to well-known figures in the community: Rasterman, Fyodor, Jeremy Allison and so on. They all gave a very positive response, and OSDEM was on the road to success.

For the second year, OSDEM was renamed FOSDEM. And now, many years later, it has grown into the event it is today. We now try to cover a wide spectrum of open source projects, and offer a platform for people to collaborate in the true open source spirit. Every year, we host more than 5000 developers at the ULB Solbosch campus.

Raphael is no longer the driving force behind FOSDEM. After 7 years of hard work he left the team for new Open Source plans. The FOSDEM flag is now proudly carried by the following people:

The team

• Annelies Bollen
• Gerry Demaret
• Michael De Swert
• Philippe De Swert
• Geert Goossens
• Tias Guns
• Jan Gyselinck
• Richard Hartmann
• Job Joossen
• Alasdair Kergon
• Daniele Lacamera
• Niels Laukens
• Koert Loret
• Jochen Maes
• Jan-Frederik Martens
• Philip Paeps
• Juan Rial
• Stella Rouzi
• Wouter Simons
• Wynke Stulemeijer
• Mark Van den Borre
• Wouter Verhelst
• Koen Vervloesem
• Bart Weijs
• The many volunteers who help out during the weekend
• ...