FOSDEM'21 6&7 Feb. 2021 online -

with Amateur Radio

Online FOSDEM is a free event for software developers and software interested radio amateurs to meet, share ideas and collaborate. Every year, thousands of developers of free and open source software from all over the world gather at the event in Brussels. In 2021, they will gather online.

FOSDEM is a rather busy conference. This edition features 667 speakers, 735 events, and 113 tracks. Every year, FOSDEM hosts a wide variety of activities. This page gives an overview with links to further information about scheduled events.

There is a close relationship between the experimenters in amateur radio and the open source movement. Just as we radio amateurs are entitled to build or modify our own hardware, the same applies to the software in our equipment. For radio amateurs who are interested in new technologies, open source software is an incredibly wide and highly interesting field of activity.

FOSDEM is a free and non-commercial event organised by the community for the community. The goal is to provide free and open source software developers and communities a place to meet to

get in touch with other developers and projects
be informed about the latest developments in the free software world
be informed about the latest developments in the open source world
attend interesting talks and presentations on various topics by project leaders and committers
to promote the development and benefits of free software and open source solutions.

Participation and attendance is totally free.

At least two of the speakers are radio amateurs: Daniel Estévez EA4GPZ and Daniel Pocock HB9FZT.

SDR Software Defined Radio has a devroom of its own. Furthermore, several presentations deal with «GNU Radio».

A stands page informs of organizations that used to have a booth at the previous physical conferences. These organisations now have chatrooms and videos instead. Among these «exhibitors» is also the «Free Software Foundation Europe». This group is committed to ensuring freedom of software experimentation in complete accordance with the radio amateur community. As is well known, this freedom is acutely threatened by the EU Commission, which is planning to make CE certification of the software in radio equipment compulsory, including receiving equipment. At the IARU General Conference 2021 (see our report), Jann DG8NGN explained his fear that software uploads, for example from HAMNET equipment, will soon no longer be permitted! He recommended the «Free Software Foundation Europe» (FSFE.org) and its mailing list. These interests of the FSFE are identical with those of experimenting radio amateurs. See https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/radiodirective. The FSFE quite rightly speaks of the «Radio Lockdown Directive» on its website!

Willi HB9AMC

Link: https://fosdem.org/2021/

Link: https://fosdem.org/2021/schedule/