libres, ensemble.

Richard Stallman had a Marxian effect on technology in the 1980s. He started the Free Software movement. His ideas mobilized a vast number of programmers and the ideology he initiated still has a great gravity in the software ecosystem. Since the year 2000, thousands of developers travel to Brussels every February like pilgrims for Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM). I am proud to be among the pilgrims for the second year in a row. Stallman's ideas had a tremendous effect on me. I was a law student when I first read about him, free software and open source. Free software, as an ideology, was the primary reason for my interest in programming. It was rebellious, collective and a threat to the status quo. It was the right kind of religion—as Kurt Vonnegut says: "A really good religion is a form of treason." {{< figure width=400 src="/images/libres-ensemble/cover.png" >}} In the halls of Free University of Brussels, thousands of developers gather around to hoard swag from open source companies, write "Fuck Off Google" on the walls and talk about technology. If you ask them about their interest in free and open source software, they'll mention things like "innovation", "community", "privacy" and "freedom". But if you dig enough you'll see that their—our—reason distills into simply "being on the right side of history". This is why the free and open source community resembles Marxists to me. It's a community formed around an ideology that is rational, progressive and collective and it is unapologetically resistant even in the hardest moments because "what they stand for is just right." I am a proud member of this community and I truly believe my employer is a bastion of open source software. I hope to be in Brussels many more years and I hope FOSDEM continues for many more years after I pass away.