FOSDEM 2005 in Brussels, Belgium
DEVELOPER MEET
The annual winter meeting of Europe’s open source developers took place February 25-27 in Brussels, Belgium. Again the event was a mustn’t miss for thousands of contributors to free projects and a welcome opportunity for developers to exchange ideas outside the borders of their own communities.
In the fifth year since its inception, the FOSDEM (Free and Open Source European Meeting) developer conference remains true to its principles: free, as technical as possible, and only as commercial as needs be. This concept continues to draw increasing numbers of developers from all over Europe and the US. The big guns were all there; for example, Alan Cox, who has returned to kernel development after a break, Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales, Richard Stallman, Theo de Raadt from Open BSD, KDE founder Matthias Ettrich. The organizers talked of 3,500 attendees, but arrived at this figure by adding the attendees from both days. Realistically, the figure is somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 participants, as the majority attended both days.
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
Gnome’s Dash to Panel Extension Gets a Massive Update
If you're a fan of the Gnome Dash to Panel extension, you'll be thrilled to hear that a new version has been released with a dock mode.
-
Blender App Makes it to the Big Screen
The animated film "Flow" won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the 97th Academy Awards held on March 2, 2025 and Blender was a part of it.
-
Linux Mint Retools the Cinnamon App Launcher
The developers of Linux Mint are working on an improved Cinnamon App Launcher with a better, more accessible UI.
-
New Linux Tool for Security Issues
Seal Security is launching a new solution to automate fixing Linux vulnerabilities.
-
Ubuntu 25.04 Coming Soon
Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) has been given an April release date with many notable updates.
-
Gnome Developers Consider Dropping RPM Support
In a move that might shock a lot of users, the Gnome development team has proposed the idea of going straight up Flatpak.
-
openSUSE Tumbleweed Ditches AppArmor for SELinux
If you're an openSUSE Tumbleweed user, you can expect a major change to the distribution.
-
Plasma 6.3 Now Available
Plasma desktop v6.3 has a couple of pretty nifty tricks up its sleeve.
-
LibreOffice 25.2 Has Arrived
If you've been hoping for a release that offers more UI customizations, you're in for a treat.
-
TuxCare Has a Big AlmaLinux 9 Announcement in Store
TuxCare announced it has successfully completed a Security Technical Implementation Guide for AlmaLinux OS 9.