After two meetings at the United Nations in
Geneva I made my way to Brussels to participate in FOSDEM, which took
place at the Universite
Libre de Bruxelles on Saturday and Sunday.
As usual, FOSDEM was a place of great chaos and great fun. Some
things have become long-established FOSDEM tradition by now, like the
pre-FOSDEM beer at the Le Roy d'Espagne, or the fact that network
connectivity only started to work reliably on Sunday afternoon when
FOSDEM was essentially over.
As usual, the Free
Software Foundation Europe had its traditional spot with three
large tables bearing an impressive amount of t-shirts, including our
new "Got Freedom?" Fellowship shirt. No less than 16 people, most of
them volunteers, helped to make FSFE's booth at FOSDEM 2006 a great
success.
Some of them at times take days of their vacation and travel
thousands of kilometers without seeing any reimbursement for their
trips or hotel rooms only to spend two days talking to hundreds of
people, explaining FSFE, it's activities, the Fellowship, as well as
selling t-shirts and referring people to the right points of contact
for more complicate requests. The importance of this work is often
underestimated, and too often does not get the praise it deserves.
Their work too often remains silently expected or accepted, and
rarely gets the credit it deserves. Therefore: Thanks to all of you
for what are doing, I am your biggest fan! I am truly grateful to be
working with and for such a great team.
As for myself, FOSDEM was mainly spent running around and talking
to many people, some of which I had not seen in a while, some I never
had the chance to meet before, including the great team behind Asterisk, which I
had a lot of fun with.
For monday, FSFE had been organising a media round table about
software patents for which we had invited various parties in favor and
against, including SAP, Microsoft and the BSA. Ultimately, only the
BSA came in the person of Francisco Mingorance to argue in favor of
software patents. On the other side it was planned to have Pieter
Hintjens, president of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure,
one of FSFE's associate organisations, and myself for the
Free Software
Foundation Europe.
Unfortunately, I must have had some very bad luck with the famous
mussels from Brussels on Sunday night. In any case, Monday morning
found me in rather bad shape with all the unpleasant side effects you
might imagine now, including some fever.
In the old days, I would have had to do this event regardless, and
did so on previous occasions. This time however I was able to profit
from the growth of FSFE's Team: After a call to some of our people on
the ground, it was clear that Ciaran O'Riordan could join the discussion in my
stead. As our Brussels representative, he is intimately familiar with
all the issues around software patents and such discussions are part
of his regular work.
I myself made my way to the airport together with Pablo, Maria and
Xavier from our Spanish Team. When I finally boarded my flight to
Hamburg, I found out how much luggage you can fit into the Canadair
jet, because it turns out that Liza Minelli was on the plane with her
entire entourage for tonight's concert in Hamburg.
Fortunately the flight was short and I soon arrived in Hamburg,
where I now have to catch up with a mountain of paperwork, laundry and
other not exactly trivial things before my next trip on Friday.
