FOSDEM (Free and Open source Software Developers’ European Meeting) is a non-commercial, volunteer-organized meeting where almost ten thousand people come together around free and open-source software development. It is aimed at developers and anyone interested in the free and open-source software movement. It really is totally open, anyone can just walk up and attend anything. There is no registration even. And yet, it is full of people who are central to so many key free software projects that power the world we live in.

For me personally, FOSDEM was good and intense as usual. I went to FOSDEM for the first time about five years ago. At that time, when I told people I worked on F-Droid, they asked, “What’s that?”. I went last year, and when I said F-Droid, people mostly responded, “oh yeah, nice project!” This year, it felt like most people’s response was to show me F-Droid installed on their phone then to thank me. It was really a wonderful confirmation to receive, especially in person, and was a great reminder that we are positively affecting people’s lives, although our day-to-day experience is mostly dealing with the problems that people report.

I’ve been doing free software so long (30 years this year!) that it was hard for me to walk 50m without running into someone that I should discuss something with. I talked with people from Debian, Codeberg, CalyxOS, Clean Insights, Weblate, The European Commission, Tella, Replicant, LineageOS, OpenJDK, /e/ foundation, FSFE, EDRi, Guix, Reproducible Builds, Huridocs, WolfSSL, Internews SUSTAIN, OpenWISP, OnionShare, Mailvelope, Butter, Thunderbird, Eclipse Foundation and more. One thing that is particularly impressive is the project stands. Basically every one of them was staffed by core contributors. Many founders and project leaders were even at the stands answering questions from whoever walked up (Mastodon, Calyx, NLnet, ISRG/Let’s Encrypt, Open Source Design, Codeberg, Thunderbird, Matrix and more).

EU Legislation and Free Software

For me, the biggest part was the Open Source In The European Legislative Landscape devroom. There were a number of people from the European Commission actively engaging with the hackers like me to understand free software in the context of the Digital Markets Act, the Cyber Resiliency Act, and the Product Liability Directive. It was great to see that they are generally supportive of our point of view. The Digital Markets Act is shaping up to be a powerful tool for opening up things for free software. The key question now is whether the European Commission will step up to strongly enforce it in the face of well-funded attacks from Big Tech.

From that experience, I now feel that the current state of the EU’s Cyber Resiliency Act (CRA) and the Product Liability Directive (PLD) should not negatively affect F-Droid or its contributors. I am not a lawyer, so this is based on my understanding after lots of discussions with people who know a lot of about it. This is my current understanding of why F-Droid and anyone who contributes to it should not have to change what they are doing:

• The F-Droid legal entity makes the “product” so it would be liable.
• F-Droid is currently entirely non-commercial, handles no money, and only commercial activity is regulated by CRA and PLD.
• Volunteer contributors are very clearly exempt since all their activity is non-commercial.
• Donation-funded contributions like our Liberapay should also not be affected since donations are not paying for a product.
• Contracted contributors are helping build the regulated product, so the legal entities of the contractors would not be liable for F-Droid’s “product”.

All in all, I enjoyed FOSDEM very much and found it an amazing place to exchange with other free software projects. The only downside were the crowds when trying to get food and drink, and the Wi-Fi and cellular networks being overwhelmed. I can recommend bringing a spare sandwich and a water bottle. I hope that the F-Droid community can be better represented there in the future, and I’ll work on that myself to help make it happen. Hope to see you at FOSDEM!