10 candles for Brussels Free and Open Source Developer Meeting

For immediate release

FOSDEM: 10 candles for Brussels Free and Open Source Developer Meeting

Brussels, Dec. 16, 2009 - On February 6 and 7, over five thousand Free and Open Source developers
gather at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, campus Solbosch, for the tenth annual FOSDEM
conference. Keynote speakers this year include Brooks Davis (FreeBSD committer), Richard Clayton
(Cambridge university security expert) and Greg Kroah-Hartman (Linux kernel maintainer).


In the last 10 years, Free and Open Source software have evolved from a relatively limited movement
to a sweeping revolution in the world of software. Greg Kroah-Hartman: "Linux is 80% of the world's
top 500 super computers right now and we're also the number one embedded operating system today.
We've got both sides of the market because it's--yeah it's pretty amazing. I don't know why, but
we're doing something right."


An impressive main track has been assembled. Amongst the 20 speakers are Benoit Chesneau (CouchDB
document database), Mark Wielaard (SystemTap tracing tool) and David Fifield (nmap network security
scanner). In parallell to the main track, 30 lightning talks are planned: short 15 minute
presentations on diverse subjects.

One of the things that make FOSDEM unique are the developer rooms. These are rooms in which
selected projects can organize their own schedule: presentations, brainstorming and coding
sessions. With cross-pollination between projects one of FOSDEM's main goals, Debian, Suse, Fedora
and other Linux distributions get together in a distro miniconf-within-the-conf. On Sunday, the
KDE, Gnome and XFCE desktop projects share a developer room. Other developer rooms include, amongst
others, Drupal, X.org, and Ruby on Rails.

Between main tracks, dev rooms and lightning talks and during breaks, visitors will find plenty of
room for distraction at the many booths lining the halls: eight Linux and BSD distributions, an
O'Reilly bookshop with discounts, FSF Europe, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org ...

And finally, keeping up a good tradition, FOSDEM is and stays free. No fees nor registration
needed.

For more information, please refer to http://fosdem.org .
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About FOSDEM:



FOSDEM is an annual free and non-commercial event for Free Software and Open Source developers, by
the community for the community. We provide Free Software and Open Source developers and
communities with a place to get in touch with other developers and projects; keep visitors up to
date on the latest developments in the Free Software and Open Source world; offer a platform for
talks and presentations to Free Software and Open Source project leaders and committers; and
promote the development and the benefits of Free Software and Open Source solutions. FOSDEM
Participation and attendance is free, though the organization gratefully accepts donations and
sponsorship.



Press contact:

Mark Van den Borre, +32 486 961726, mvandenborre@fosdem.org (NL, EN)

Elise Huard, +32 486 511450, ehuard@fosdem.org (FR, NL, EN)