In 2025, #FreeSoftware supporters like you organized twenty-nine #LibreLocal meetups across five continents. Let's organize even more meetups this year! https://u.fsf.org/4af #FSF

In 2025, #FreeSoftware supporters like you organized twenty-nine #LibreLocal meetups across five continents. Let's organize even more meetups this year! https://u.fsf.org/4af #FSF

If you're attending SCALE, stop by our booth for some freedom-focused conversations and merch: https://u.fsf.org/4ah #FreeSoftware #FSF

It's time to start organizing meetups for #LibreLocal 2026! https://u.fsf.org/4af #FreeSoftware #FSF

Join the Bonn, Germany #FSFE #FreeSoftware group in celebrating #ILoveFS Day with free software friends, including the #FSF's Craig Topham: https://u.fsf.org/4ae #maintainers

A #ThankGNU! to Martin Jässing, Simon Josefsson, and The Innovation and Understanding Fund 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/45m

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Image that says 'Thank GNU' with a GNU head by Vijay Kumar Bagavath Singh

Free software is for everyone: https://framatube.org/w/vdScW3ApcAcFNsPLKe4U8m #FSF #FreeSoftware

A #ThankGNU! to Jean-Louis Abraham, Jeremiah LaRocco, and Joseph Cox 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/45m

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Image that says 'Thank GNU' with a GNU head by Vijay Kumar Bagavath Singh

Interested in free software, but not sure where to get started? Check out our #FreedomLadder for some ideas: u.fsf.org/3f1 #FreeSoftware #FSF

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)