[fvdessen]

I for one found this event really sad. It's like the OSS community has rejected the past 5 years of software and technological changes and now choses to live in a retro computing bubble.

We're in 2026, hardware is made in dark factories in shenzhen in fully automated assembly lines by the million of units. Software is written using LLMs hosted in gigantic datacenters. Millions of people are now writing their own software with vibe coding platforms from their phones

What is the FOSDEM community's answer to the real concerns that these changes pose ? Let's hand solder raspberry pis ! let's self host LLMS from 2 years ago on FreeBSD ! Look, i can run wasn linux on this risc-v cpu !

These takes are completely out of touch with reality, no wonder that nobody younger than 40 was attending the conference. The next generation is doing something else and rightly so.

[benou]

> What is the FOSDEM community's answer to the real concerns that these changes pose ? Let's hand solder raspberry pis ! let's self host LLMS from 2 years ago on FreeBSD ! Look, i can run wasn linux on this risc-v cpu !

Maybe, just maybe, they're having fun? FOSS is not only about corporate open-source, but also genuine curiosity. Both can have their place.

> no wonder that nobody younger than 40 was attending the conference. The next generation is doing something else and rightly so.

I saw a lot of students at FOSDEM, attending, presenting and helping the at organization.

[fvdessen]

OSS original point wasn't just to have fun among nerds, but to have a real impact on the world. Fun and curiosity is fine, but there's a line where it becomes a tech themed larp event, and FOSDEM is trending towards the later.

Corporate Open Source should have its place at FOSDEM. The linux dinosaur companies such as Redhat are still there. But what about the new ones ? What about Mistral, Odoo ? Even the 'evil' ones such as facebook, github, etc, aren't they contributing a lot of open software ? Aren't they more relevant than let's say Olimex ?

There were some students, yes but the attendence is growing old, and the chit chat is more about 'remember this and that' than 'we're building the future'

[guerby]

"nobody younger than 40 was attending"

Hmmm, I was there and this is definitely not true.

[anthk]

LLM turds will degrade more and more over time. The newbies will become even dumber and people with actual knowledge will be several steps over anthing else trained to copy and paste from bullshitters.

[protocolture]

Yeah man.

Just like how novel reading, newspapers, music, rock music, the internet, computer games all made everyone super dumb and the world ended.

I am definitely sure that this time you are right and the world will actually end this time, everyones going to end up way dumber than you, or if they dont, you will still pretend it happened and be smug about it on the internet.

[eMPee584]

Would you mind showing some compassion for the unintelligent, it's none of their fault.. It's incentives, sociodynamics and manifold other preconditions that bring about these symptoms.

[mixmastamyk]

It’s not clear what you want them to do instead.

[fvdessen]

Have an AI track focused on how to use AI to improve OSS software instead of how to run LLama on RISC-V.

Invite the open source developpers behind popular OSS AI frameworks such as opencode, etc.

Invite talkers from large companies that produce open source software and models such as Mistral.AI

Invite talkers from companies that run OSS LLMs at scale such as groq

Invite the people who build drones in Ukraine, (probably the most succesful open hardware story to date). Have drone building workshops / drone piloting stands

[iso1631]

> let's self host LLMS from 2 years ago on FreeBSD

Sounds brilliant. 2024 LLMs were great, and hosted in gigantic datacenters. South Park did an episode on ChatGPT in 2023 to assist with the timescales.

If we can run Free LLMs on a desktop PC that's competitive with 2024 a massive win.

Unless of course you believe that AI will continue to increase exponentially, in which case we're heading for such a different world in 10-15 years that it's meaningless to worry about it and you might as well have fun before the AI decides to kill us all

[throw567643u8]

> What is the FOSDEM community's answer to the real concerns that these changes pose ?

I only caught half a dozen talks, and two of them talked about this exact point.

[lmf4lol]

which ones ? would like to watch them. thanks in advance

[direwolf20]

Remember this is just one conference. This is not a top–down imposition of a new European world order. While the amount of policy discussion is quite high — out of necessity now — and EU representatives attend — this event is still a lot of developers coming together.

This is also why the EU has a hard time. America prefers the capitalist model. EU is trying to find ways encourage individual developers each with their own interests to contribute to shared European goals (which the devs also share but might not find interesting), and they're trying to do this without directly saying "you there, go and do this", and that's harder than herding cats.

For instance they do it through NLNET funding. Devs can propose projects and the ones the EU wants to fund will receive funding. It's a roundabout way to do things. Let's see if it pays off.