Interested in helping #FreeSoftware users find freedom-respecting programs by updating the Free Software Directory (FSD)? Please consider joining the FSD meeting this Friday on IRC. Read more at: https://www.fsf.org/events/fsd-2026-06-19-irc #FreeSoftwareDirectory #FSF

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A #FSF associate membership doesn't just support the #FreeSoftware movement, it also comes with a lot of great perks: https://www.fsf.org/associate/benefits

A #ThankGNU! to Howard Pan, Reynaldo Cordero, and Ron Hume for helping the FSF to promote #FreeSoftware. To see a longer list of those who have helped us financially in our advocacy for #SoftwareFreedom and awareness, visit: https://u.fsf.org/4ao

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Local meetups are great for #FreeSoftware of all ages and experiences: https://u.fsf.org/4ag #FSF #LibreLocal

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.

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Three slides from https://fosdem.org/2026/events/attachments/SFKNTZ-welcome_to_fosdem_2026/slides/265524/2026-01-3_k4oppqv.pdf. 1) Top left has the phrase "Open Source has always been political", 2) top right, has the world "Sovereignty" and the third has the sponosrs of fodem (including Google and Redhat-IBM)

I feel very good about the fact that I now have two different projects that I started that both created billion-dollar companies. ... I mean, clearly they people built billion-dollar companies on top of both of my big projects. And and some people ask me, "Doesn't that make you feel bad?" And I'm like, "No, you're not getting it. That makes me feel really good because that means that what I did was worthwhile and meaningful, right?

Many people contribute to #freesoftware and promote GNU/Linux for a better society, not for profit!