FOSDEM

And it was not just the people that were advocating, but definitely also the policymakers that were willing to entertain the thought that some changes were necessary.

I think also it was really impressive that throughout at least some years of the work being done on the CRA, that the, uh, the head negotiator of the European Commission also, I think like two years in a row consecutively, gave a talk at FOSDEM, um, the Free and Open Source Software Developers European Meetup, which is not something that...

I don't think I had ever seen any sort of, like, government official give a talk-

Yeah

there before.

Probably there were some instances, but it's, it's, like, really quite a unique thing.

And the fact that they did that, and that they did it actually more than twice, because also last year there was a, a fair amount of, uh, commission officials present at FOSDEM, I think really speaks to their willingness to engage with, with this community.

They made stickers last year.

So, uh, you know, circle that one in red on your calendar.

Uh, there, FOSDEM is coming up.

FOSDEM is coming up with a, uh, dev proposal submitted, which will be very cool for us.

I was at FOSDEM just this year, and we shared our room very happily with some of the folks from, uh, IPFS and from Matrix and from Roost.

It would be great to give At Proto its own room home at FOSDEM, uh, next year too.

Yeah.

So keep an eye on that one.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm, uh, I'm a huge fan of having it in universities like the, uh, FOSDEM over here in the, in, uh, Europe.

Uh, so tell me, um, ha- have you been to the building itself yourself? Can you describe what it's like?

Actually, I have not, so I'm not [laughs] the good person to, to give a virtual sort of tour.

Yeah, it looks, it looks really nice from the photos that I seen online, and it's really good to be going back to the roots again and, uh, you know, back to the core, getting...

I really can't, uh, express to people, if you've not been to a freeLib open source event like OLF, that's the stalwart, it's the example I give.

In the States, we are at OLF, here we're at FOSDEM, at Odd Camp.

These are the, like, the big conferences in your areas.

And also just strengthening kind of your connections, not only with the people in your community, but with who are in other projects who are complementary to yours.

And one of the, I think, the best examples of this was when I got hired, it was in 2021, maybe just a little bit after FOSDEM.

And so I share the news on s- socials, and, uh, Diogo Constantino, who is part of the-

Oh

...

Ubuntu Portugal community, who is amazing, he's like, "Hey, Monica, you've got this job.

Can we, can we have an Ubuntu stand at FOSDEM next year?" And me, I'm just like, because of course, I wanna like, "Yes, let's be at all the things," I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I'm gonna try s- so hard." Not realizing, oh yeah, you have to apply to have a stand at FOSDEM, and they don't take everyone.

And we hadn't gone in, like, years.

I'm super excited.

I just started looking into FOSDEM and what it is.

You don't know FOSDEM? I've never been.

I heard about it.

I like when I went,

I was sick of it honestly I'm like cancel anthropic situation at work

I was stuck with it.

So anyway, there's a lot more to discuss aside from FOSDEM and Opus 5.0.

Yeah, but, uh, it is, it is amazing how, uh, how when you release open source, like, the only people that are actually asking for your license are the people that do open source as well.

And the only conference I've ever been where people were really excited about licenses was, uh, was FOSDEM in Belgium, like, an open source conference, and it was just incredible how much detail you have there about these kind of things.

But yeah, it's, it's weird.

Like, I mean, we talk about, like, the '90s when, when, uh, s- high school kids got sued for millions of dollars for downloading, like, three songs.

Yeah, first we want to share some news.

The first one is that FOSDEM has been announced.

If you don't know, FOSDEM is a conference.

The acronym stands for Free and Open Source Developer European Meeting.

Happens every, I think, last weekend of January or first weekend of February in Brussels.

Yeah, that was

great.

It was a little bit of a logistical nightmare, but it was fun to bring Cody to FOSDEM.