The eternal recurrence of open source drama
Submitted to Open Source Summit Europe 2026 on . Still waiting to hear back.
- Level
- Any
- Length
- Session Presentation (30-40 minutes in length)
- Track
- OSS Enabling & Management
Abstract, as submitted
Each year brings a new round of changing norms in the open source community. Or so it seems. How real is the gut-feel that things have actually changed? This session draws on an analysis of almost 600 weekly episodes of the Software Defined Talk podcast, which has covered the people, projects, organizations, companies, and users of the open source world for 12 years, tracking just about every bit of open source "drama" along the way. The talk catalogues those events, their impact, and their longevity, asking: does anyone still care? did anything actually happen? were the worst fears and hopes real? Are we just reliving the same doom-loops over and over, or are we getting better doom-loops each time?
This is the text that went into the CFP form, kept as submitted - not a later rewrite of it. Talks get retitled and reworked between submission and stage, so what was actually delivered may differ.