FOSDEM 2026 – Open-Source Conference in Brussels

Re:FOSDEM 2026 – Open-Source Conference in Brussels – Day#1 ... by wiz21c on Sunday February 01, 2026 @09:52AM (#46846586)

with AI we have entered capitalistic computing, where it's the scale of computing that makes it political (before, it was a clever idea that brought the political thing, like MP3, encryption, etc.). As it is massive scale (think 2GWatt data centers), I'm afraid the poor little FOSS guy won't be able to be as relevant as before. It's not David against Goliath anymore, it's FOSS against billions of zombies.

I happen to be one of these FOSS guys though and as you do, I think it's better to stay off to keep my mental health; else it makes me feel powerless. How sad: 20 years ago I thought the fight was possible.

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Re:FOSDEM 2026 – Open-Source Conference in Brussels – Day#1 ... by positron26 on Sunday February 01, 2026 @10:12AM (#46846714)

This comment has so many statements framed by a lot of specific political premises that not everyone agrees on. It's hard to talk about political neutrality without going to the next higher meta language where we view our own interests alongside others' independent interests more abstractly.

A lot of the problems people see with OSS are a result of "free/libre" having been successful at training OSS enthusiasts to embrace commensalist thinking, bomb-shelter monasticism, and to reject the consumer but then complain when the consumer has to turn to the network-effect entrenched platforms while other businesses lack the tools to compete in open networks that were never built.

Anyway, check out https://prizeforge.com

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Re:FOSDEM 2026 – Open-Source Conference in Brussels – Day#1 ... by iso1631 on Monday February 02, 2026 @05:16AM (#46854344)

The change was the rise of "cloud", with saas, paas and even iaas. The world no longer ran software they controlled (even if it were proprietary you still controlled windows NT and Office 95) on hardware they owned.

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