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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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

A #ThankGNU! to David Ignat, Iñaki Arenaza, and Inouye Satoru 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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A #ThankGNU! to Stephen Longfield, Steve Tuyizere, Wayne Chapeskie, and Zachary Hanson 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

A #ThankGNU! to Sally Gudbrandsen, Sandra Hatcher, and Shashank Sabniveesu 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

A #ThankGNU! to Paul Morris, Peter Kunze, and René Genz 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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A #ThankGNU! to Morten Lind, Nicolas Avrutin, and Pablo González Otero 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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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)

A #ThankGNU! to Massimo Spadotto, Michael Ng, and Michael Stroucken 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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A #ThankGNU! to Kevin Miller, Mark Boenke, and Martin Jansche 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