• Where: FOSDEM 2027, in person Brussels Belgium, room to be announced
  • When: Saturday, 30 January 2027, all day.
  • Deadline for submissions: Monday 23 November 2026 at 23:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth)
  • Where to submit: https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2027/cfp
  • Speakers notified: Wednesday 2 December 2026 
  • Finalized Schedule: Monday 7 December 2026 

Intro

The Legal and Policy dev room invites hackers, developers, contributors, lawyers, and decision-makers alike to share their knowledge with the community. We invite you to contribute to our dev room by submitting proposals for 25 or 50 minutes talks or panels about software freedom related legal or policy topics on intermediate to advanced level (due to the expected audience please do not submit introductory talks). In case you have any questions about how to contribute to the sharing of knowledge in our dev room, please do not hesitate to contact us at <fosdem-legal-policy at faif.us>.

You can respond to this CfP on or before 23 November 2026. Look at past talks in our DevRoom for inspiration:

Inclusion Statement

The organizers of this DevRoom are committed to increasing the diversity of the free software movement. To that end, our CfP process takes demographic information into account in order to build a program that features as many different voices and perspectives as possible. If you are comfortable doing so, please share any demographic information about yourself in the "Submission Notes". Such disclosure is not mandatory by any means.

No Assurance of Acceptance

The organizers (listed below) realize many of our friends and colleagues will respond to this CfP. We welcome submissions from all, but an invitation from any of us to submit is not an assurance of acceptance. We typically must make hard decisions. We appreciate the effort you put into crafting your submission to give yourself the best chance of acceptance.

Submitting a proposal

  • Go to FOSDEM's pretalx site: https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2027/cfp
  • Select the track  "Legal and Policy"
  • Include a title. Shorter and more concise is better!
  • Include an Abstract of about 500 characters and a full description of any length you wish, but please be concise, clear and descriptive.
  • Indicate a 25 or 50 minute time slot. We will likely reserve 50 minute time slots for panels. 
  • State that you agree to CC BY-SA-4.0 or CC BY-4.0 licensing of your talk in the "Submission Notes" field. Add a statement such as this: "Should my presentation be scheduled for FOSDEM 2027, I agree to license all recordings, slides and any other materials presented under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 International license."

About the DevRoom Organizers

The co-organizers of the FOSDEM 2027 Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom are (in alphabetical order by surname):

  • Richard Fontana - Principal Commercial Counsel, Red Hat
  • Matthias Kirschner, President, Free Software Foundation Europe
  • Bradley M. Kuhn, Policy Fellow and Hacker-in-Residence at Software Freedom Conservancy
  • Tom Marble, Chief Technology Officer, Informatique, Inc.
  • Alexander Sander, FSFE Senior Policy Consultant
  • Karen M. Sandler, Executive Director of the Software Freedom Conservancy, Lecturer-In-Law, Columbia Law School

You are welcome to contact us all at <fosdem-legal-policy at faif.us> with questions about this CFP.

Where: FOSDEM 2027, room to be announced
When: Sunday, 31st of January 2027, all day.
Deadline for submissions: 1st December 2026, noon CET
Where to submit: https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2027/cfp

Introduction
The EU’s understanding of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) has evolved over the past few years. While, in some cases, these rules are still written with proprietary software and services in mind, in others, European Union (EU) lawmakers are increasingly considering not just the impact of their laws on FLOSS, but also how FLOSS can be leveraged to achieve their goals.

In this context APELL, Eclipse Foundation, Github, Linux Foundation Europe, Mozilla, NLNET Labs, Open Forum Europe, the Open Source Initiative, OpenSSF, and Red Hat are delighted to invite you to submit a proposal for a talk, and join us for the 4th edition of the Open Source & EU Policy devroom on Sunday, January 31st 2027, to explore how FLOSS interacts with the EU, including how ongoing and upcoming EU laws could impact the FLOSS ecosystem, what we have to gain, what we have to lose, and what needs to change. 

The devroom will focus on bringing together FLOSS communities and EU lawmakers, including Members of the European Parliament, and Staff from the Parliament and the Commission, helping lawmakers improve their laws and address major challenges, such as digital sovereignty and secure, interoperable technology; while giving FLOSS communities and the Digital Commons a place to raise concerns, propose improvements and changes, and figure out how best to prepare for and respond to policy proposals.

Topics covered

We welcome talks that explore topics such as:

  • Recent and upcoming EU legislation and their interaction with Open Source and the Open Source community:
  • Open Source and Tech Sovereignty, for example:
    • The EU Open Source Strategy,
    • The Cloud and AI Development Act,
    • The Public Procurement Act,
    • European Innovation Act.
  • FLOSS as a public good in EU-funded research and public sector digital transformation.
  • Open Source, Age Verification and Encryption, for example:
    • Kids Act,
    • Chat Control.
  • European Standardisation.
  • Platform regulation (DSA/DMA).
  • Cybersecurity law.
  • Policy engagement strategies from/for Open Source foundations, projects, and companies.
  • Legal and compliance challenges for FLOSS communities.
  • Security, transparency, and trust in the FLOSS ecosystem from a regulatory perspective.
  • Stories from the field: real-world effects of EU policy on Open Source projects, and what policy can learn from Open Source.
  • FLOSS as a solution to Europe’s problems, FLOSS for European democracy.
  • Cross-border and global policy implications for FLOSS in the EU context.
  • How developers and communities can engage meaningfully in the policymaking process.

Your proposal

This devroom aims to be accessible to both technical and non-technical audiences: no need to be a lawyer or a lobbyist, or a developer to participate. Please keep this in mind when preparing your talks!  Our devroom also aims to be constructive, with a core goal being giving lawmakers and FLOSS communities a better understanding of one-another, hence we will particularly prioritise proposals which can be supported by the presence of relevant policymakers.

Please indicate your preferred format in your submission:

Session Types and Lengths:

  • Standard talks (20 minutes, more time possible where justified) – deep dives, law presentations, case studies
  • Panels (30-45 min) – cross-role discussions on a key topic about the role of OSS in EU policies

Deadline
We invite you to submit your proposals for talks by 1st December 2026 at noon CET at the latest. Kindly note that this deadline reflects the FOSDEM organisers’ timeline, so we will be unable to accept any submissions after it. We encourage you to submit your proposals as early as possible, as proposals will be evaluated on a rolling basis. We plan to publish the complete schedule for our developer room by 7 December (or earlier).