10th edition of FOSDEM this weekend

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.

Some main track speaker interviews have been published: see
http://fosdem.org/2010/interviews


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)