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   Stéphane Bortzmeyer (bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 22:35:41 JST Stéphane Bortzmeyer

   Good morning, Brussels! First day of #FOSDEM 2026. Lots of people and lots of talks.

   https://fosdem.org/2026/

   • Embed this notice
     Bradley M. Kühn (bkuhn@fedi.copyleft.org)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 22:34:47 JST Bradley M. Kühn

     in reply to

     @bortzmeyer overheard at #FOSDEM
     > “There is a guy who does a lot of work to help the fediverse and to push people toward it. His name is Donald Trump.”

     This statement contains multitudes b/c #TruthSocial is a fork of #Mastodon. Initially, $DJT violated the #AGPLv3, but AFAIK they now comply with the license. I examined the fork & they primary code they added was an advertising platform. Obviously it doesn't have federation turned on.

     Cc: @jzb

     #GPL #FOSDEM2026 #FOSDEM26 #copyleft #AGPL

   • Embed this notice
     Stéphane Bortzmeyer (bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 22:35:00 JST Stéphane Bortzmeyer

     in reply to

     "There is a guy who does a lot of work to help the fediverse and to push people toward it. His name is Donald Trump."

     #FOSDEM

     Evan Prodromou repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Stéphane Bortzmeyer (bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 22:35:02 JST Stéphane Bortzmeyer

     in reply to

     Now, Benjamin Bellamy (not the artist, the other one), "Amplify Our Voices: Building Digital Sovereignty on the Fediverse"

     #FOSDEM

   • Embed this notice
     Stéphane Bortzmeyer (bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 22:35:03 JST Stéphane Bortzmeyer

     in reply to

     Purely corporate speak from Mastodon official, boring and self-serving. (And insisting that new users should be directed to one specific instance, but no longer mastodon.social, but mandatory Mastodon and have to agree with the terms of use.)

     #FOSDEM

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     Stéphane Bortzmeyer (bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 22:35:04 JST Stéphane Bortzmeyer

     in reply to

     Hey, but there are a lot of free seats in the Social Web devroom at #FOSDEM. Come and join us!

     Starting "Tending the Herd: Community at Mastodon"

   • Embed this notice
     Stéphane Bortzmeyer (bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 22:35:05 JST Stéphane Bortzmeyer

     in reply to

     And with deliberate attacks (think supply-chain), free software is in the battleground.

     And we are not ready for that.

     #FOSDEM

   • Embed this notice
     Stéphane Bortzmeyer (bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 22:35:20 JST Stéphane Bortzmeyer

     in reply to

     Then, we moved to hyperscalers/ GAFAM

     "Cloud first strategy" means you're proud of your incompetence.

     #FOSDEM

   • Embed this notice
     Stéphane Bortzmeyer (bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 22:35:22 JST Stéphane Bortzmeyer

     in reply to

     The growth of the Internet and of free software was during a time of [relative] peace and hope, after the end of the cold war [in Europe]. It was ideal and we forgot about war, dictatorship and other nasty things.

     #FOSDEM

   • Embed this notice
     Stéphane Bortzmeyer (bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 22:35:23 JST Stéphane Bortzmeyer

     in reply to

     "FOSS in times of war, scarcity and (adversarial) AI", talk by Michiel Leenaars "We need to talk about war"'

     Because not everything at #FOSDEM can be fun.

     [FOSS = Free / Open Source Software. AI = generating funny answers to stupid questions]

   • Embed this notice
     Stéphane Bortzmeyer (bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 22:35:24 JST Stéphane Bortzmeyer

     in reply to

     And if the room is full, or if you are remote: https://fosdem.org/schedule/streaming/

     #FOSDEM

   • Embed this notice
     Stéphane Bortzmeyer (bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 22:35:37 JST Stéphane Bortzmeyer

     in reply to

     The numbers: 1014 events, 1186 speakers, 66 track/devrooms

     "Don't skip the food queue but let staff and volunteers do it."

     #FOSDEM

   • Embed this notice
     Stéphane Bortzmeyer (bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 22:35:38 JST Stéphane Bortzmeyer

     in reply to

     • Ophélie Coelho

     First slide with "sovereignty" on it. "If we lose democracy, open source will be irrelevant"

     "Open source was always about politics"

     #FOSDEM

     @opheliecoelho

   • Embed this notice
     Stéphane Bortzmeyer (bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 22:35:39 JST Stéphane Bortzmeyer

     in reply to

     Keynote starts: "FOSDEM is the center of open source" "The center of Belgium" "The center of the European Union" "The center of the free world"

     #FOSDEM

   • Embed this notice
     Stéphane Bortzmeyer (bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 22:35:40 JST Stéphane Bortzmeyer

     in reply to

     And if you wake up early, you'll find seats!

     #FOSDEM

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 23:19:00 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Astro

     @astro @bortzmeyer are you here? Can we talk?

   • Embed this notice
     Astro (astro@c3d2.social)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 23:19:03 JST Astro

     in reply to

     @bortzmeyer https://git.orlives.de/schmittlauch/Hash2Pub would have been a truly decentralized hashtags distribution service.

   • Embed this notice
     Stéphane Bortzmeyer (bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 23:19:05 JST Stéphane Bortzmeyer

     in reply to

     "tags.pub - following hashtags globally" by Evan Prodromou

     #HashtagsAreGreat But following hashtags is not global (you may miss toots that did not arrive on your instance)

     Idea: an instance for hashtags (tags.pub) where each hashtag has its account. Instances that choose to partcipate will write to these accounts. Following a hashtag will be subscribing to these accounts.

     #FOSDEM

   • Embed this notice
     Stéphane Bortzmeyer (bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 23:19:06 JST Stéphane Bortzmeyer

     in reply to

     #Castopod software: fediverse podcast hosting platfom.
     https://castopod.org

     #FOSDEM

   • Embed this notice
     Stéphane Bortzmeyer (bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 23:19:18 JST Stéphane Bortzmeyer

     in reply to

     Unlike the previous talk (which was purely corporate), this one talks about the limitations of ActivityPub / the fediverse and about alternatives (AT, Nostr).

     #FOSDEM

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 23:20:52 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Astro

     @astro @bortzmeyer I think we need to find a good public distribution solution. I talked about the AP hack for public posts to the shared inbox a couple of weeks ago. It would be interesting to look into something like IPFS for this instead. But we need something that pushes, doesn't require polling.

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 23:27:34 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Astro

     @astro @bortzmeyer ok, maybe we can chat online over the next week or two. It'd be nice to coordinate.

   • Embed this notice
     Astro (astro@c3d2.social)'s status on Saturday, 31-Jan-2026 23:27:35 JST Astro

     in reply to

     • Evan Prodromou

     @evan No,
     I didn't want to miss your talk in front of a full lecture hall.
     @bortzmeyer