FOSDEM is the mecca for all the free software developers/hackers. No wonder the attendance in the event runs anywhere north of 7000+ developers coming from all corners of the world.
To attend FOSDEM this year is a dream come true for me. The event provides free demo booth to open source projects, also there is no entry fee to attend the conference [Yes, free to attend for everyone].
The two days spent in Brussels were exciting and nerve racking at the same time. I got to meet old time open source contributors and friends.
Some take away from the event:
- Open Source has emerged mainstream & is widely adopted as the way to develop quality software not just for hobbyists and hackers.
- There are numerous Open Source projects which has enterprise backing & are doing really well.
- This is the first event where I happen to meet developers writing codes for over 30-35 years.
- It was the only event which I found had more developers than marketing folks.
- The amount of projects showcased on cloud technology & newer programming languages made me feel that we are going strong & following our open source roots.
- Organizers and volunteers of the event are self motivated & very passionate. They put up a great event and gets credit for putting together such nice event.
I spent most of my time in Golang dev room & met local Golang contributors from Europe. AB the chief architect of Minio project gave talks on why open core licensing sucks, Minio loves Go and Userspace Linux I/O towards petascale storage. The highlight was meeting two of our project contributors based in Europe.
Last not the least I happen to enjoy great belgian beers too. 🙂
Some photographs
