Episode: 4297
Title: HPR4297: Let me tell you a bit about FOSDEM
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4297/hpr4297.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 22:37:30

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4297 for Tuesday 21 January 2025.
Today's show is entitled, Let me tell you a bit about Phostom.
It is part of the series Phostom.
It is hosted by Troller Coaster and is about 9 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summer is.
I would like to invite you all over to Brussels to attend Phostom.
Hi, Hacker Public Radio listeners.
Today I'm going to give you a short talk about Phostom.
I'm from Brussels.
I'm from Hacker Space Brussels and I've been going to Phostom for it feels like ages.
So what's Phostom?
Phostom is the free and open source developer's European meeting.
The name already says it.
It's actually made for developers but don't be fooled.
I mean only part of the audience there are developers and don't be fooled again because
only part of them come from Europe.
They're coming from all over the world.
Phostom is a cornerstone event in the open source calendar and today I'll share a bit
about its history.
It's a current program and the unique ecosystem it has inspired, including of them and other
side events like Bite Night.
So grab your favorite beverage and let's get started.
Phostom was founded in 2001 by Raphael Bodewa as Ausdem initially.
The first event was held at the ULD University Liber de Brucel and had roughly 200 attendees.
Well it has grown to become one of the largest open source events in the world with over
8000 people but who's counting I think there's a few more.
And the core values from in the beginning and by the way still at the ULDB in Brussels,
it's free to attend, it's completely volunteer run and it's a vendor neutral.
So it has the idea of allowing sponsorship but these sponsors should never influence
the content.
This year there's like over 50 dev rooms, each dev room, a dev room is like its own mini
conference dedicated to specific topics or communities.
There's a dev room on embedded systems, on Python, on decentralized internet, on documentation
and much more.
There's also like the keynotes and those are like the big cannons of course.
So these are talks from prominent figures in the open source community and they're addressing
the future of open source collaboration and technology.
Cool one.
This year for the first time I think so is the Phostom Junior track.
It's with workshops and talks designed for younger attendees but for kids I think there's
one caveat.
All content is in English so for adults English is usually not a hurdle in the open source
community or in the tech world but talking about my kids they wouldn't understand a lot
of the English talks.
So keep that in mind if you're taking your kids along for one of these.
And then there's also a long history already of the lightning talks like these 15 minute
presentations showcasing a variety of projects and ideas.
I really love Phostom and I'm really looking forward to the event this year February 1st
and so a lot of events have sprung out of Phostom because at this point there are thousands
of developers and volunteers who gather around their community and we see each other maybe
for the first or the only time a year where this community physically meets each other.
So we have people coming in the week before Phostom for example to the Hackerspace
Brussels where they have like an extra day or two even maybe hacking on their projects
hacking on free cat or rheumatrix community and they'll be working on their own project
with all the developers together and don't have to explain to you that this is really giving
these projects a boost.
If you work hard this is like one of the slogans in open source.
If you can work hard you can also play hard.
One of the events from our Hackerspace also is Bite Night.
The Saturday evening of Phostom you can all come if you're a member of the open source
community because this is a private party and only for people in the Phostom community
having the opportunity to have a drink have some fun dance a little bit make some music
don't have to tell you about nerds dancing but what happens in Hackerspace stays in Hackerspace
it's a casual event.
It's known as Bite Night, it's hosted at the Hackerspace.
This is just like 200 meters away from the metro stop so the Hackerspace is in your location
not the same one as the previous years.
Here you can see some fun projects that are running on Blinkenlite's music projects.
Also you can have a nice talk you can have a good drink Belgian beers meet some other
friends.
Another evolution I would like to mention about Phostom is where a number of people were
not really happy about how the tone of Phostom became a little bit more corporate.
So they started off Phostom and they called it off them and prioritizes on informal, experimental
and non-commercial discussions.
It's decentralized with workshops, art installations and unconference style sessions.
It reflects the diversity and adaptability of the open source community.
It's a fork, this is what open source communities do.
If they have something and are not happy about some of the features they just create a fork,
you see where the fork goes, you see where the core project goes and sometimes both exist
next to each other, sometimes they merge together again but in this case they really stay
existence as two separate things.
At the same moment in the same location, more or less it's both in Brussels.
They're really complimentary, I mean it's not a competition, I mean you can buy your
free ticket at Phostom and you can buy your free ticket for off them and you can be evil
and visit both.
No, there's, I mean they're really complimentary.
So have a look at the off-them page, oxygen.ofthem.net, have a look at the Phostom page, Phostom.org
and see what topics are of interest to you and have a visit.
Phostom, I mean it's important because it's about open source, I mean there are so much
projects, there's so much corporate power around cloud services about the world gardens,
about closed source, preparatory software and this is the occasion to actually be there
meet your developers, tell them about that favorite feature you're missing, have a drink
with them, thank them for all the great work they're doing and just maybe even volunteer
for Phostom, you can take a shift in the coat hangers area or you could help the infodesk
just go over there, collaborate, it's about transparency, it's about freedom, maybe even
a donation, exchange ideas, launch projects, strengthen communities, I mean you're related
now to submit a call for the lighting talk or something but maybe next year you could
also do that, it's a space for everyone, both for really seasoned contributors but also
for newcomers, for people who just want to thank their favorite developer, so I'd like
to invite you all to come over to Brussels and hey the fun part, if you can't make it
to Brussels, these guys are doing this technical incredible thing where they are a live streaming
50 dev rooms at the same time, from you you will be, so you can watch every every stream
every dev room I think just on their site, so you just go to Phostom.org and then you click
through on this schedule, you'll have this timetables, you pick what you want to see,
you can just watch the live stream from there, this is one of the things that started
off during COVID, so while many bad things happened during COVID, this is one of the good
things that happened, a lot of events that were out of reach of people all around the
world, now can be watched live and they're doing this all purely using open source and free
software, there's also like a great Android app or the Phostom Companion at Skull that
where you can lock out your favorite docs and create your own schedule, so thank you
people from Phostom for organizing this event for the 23rd time, since 24th time, so next
year we're having the 25th anniversary, so let's have a party, see you around, maybe
see each other at Phostom and if you can make it watch it online, there's certainly something
that you'll enjoy.
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On the Sadois status, today's show is released under Creative Commons, Attribution 4.0 International