I got hit with the flu and couldn’t make it to #fosdem 2026. I normally go because I like to get a feel for where the broader “software freedom” world is heading. But let’s be honest: FOSDEM isn’t really about #softwarefreedom in the political sense. It’s mostly an #opensource event - “open code,” “open collaboration" - framed in a way that’s comfortable for companies and public institutions.

This year, from what I watched online, a few speakers tried to bring politics back into the room. They talked about things like technological sovereignty and the war. After years of carefully avoiding politics, that shift is genuinely welcome.

But the real question is: who are you talking to, and what do you think it will achieve?

If your strategy is to appeal to the EU, or to the supposedly “good intentions” of big corporations, then you’re not fixing the movement’s confusion - you’re reinforcing it.

Because in Brussels and in C-suite offices, the only constant is money and power. And that’s why they will never seriously confront Big Tech, or the US state that protects it. The whole “we just need better policy” or “we can partner our way out of this” story collapses the moment it runs into actual interests.

And the irony is impossible to miss: FOSDEM itself takes sponsorship money from the very companies shaping the problem - including Google, and IBM (via Red Hat). Whatever you think of sponsorship in general, it’s hard to square that with any serious claim of challenging US tech hegemony.

Technological radicalism didn’t come from boardrooms or polished conference stages. It came from communities: from messy, stubborn, principled people building things together with #FreeSoftware and from the hacker ethic, with its insistence on autonomy, curiosity, and refusal to ask permission.

If we want to keep the spirit of dissent - and the possibility of genuinely free creation - alive, we have to stop chasing legitimacy from institutions that will never be on our side. We have to rebuild from the roots: our communities, our practices, and our politics.