The official announcement ​is here. See also FOSDEM2010AltOSDevroomProjectsToContact

During the previous edition of the Free and Open Source Software Developer's European Meeting (​FOSDEM), several alternative FOSS Operating System projects (​Haiku, ​ReactOS) shared booths, but there were discussions about going beyond presenting each projects on its own, and instead seek cooperation. Recently, at the Google Summer of Code mentor summit, other OS projects gathered and formed the ​Rosetta OS group to work on driver sharing.

This year, the FOSDEM (in Brussels, 6-7th February 2010) will host the "Alt-OS" devroom on sunday from 9:00 to 17:00, organized by members of the ​Rosetta OS project.

This devroom is meant as a place for Free and OpenSource Alternative Operating System projects to share ideas and work on topics like:

• distinguishing design and features,
• device drivers and how to share them,
• sharing code for internal components,
• internal usage of other FOSS projects to build upon,
• application portability,
• interoperability,
  • file formats,
  • extended attributes...

We are interested to hear about your OS projects, how they are designed, and what they could eventually share for other projects' benefit. In addition to all FOSS OS projects, any application project that is seeking new target platforms is invited. Featured projects will include participants from the Rosetta OS project which ​charter matches our devroom goal.

As time allows, we are also interested in transversal subjects in cooperation with other devrooms. As an example, possible topics could include:

• unusual package management with the Crossdistro room,
• standardization of GUI elements and behavior with the Crossdesktop devroom,
• scalability with the Embedded devroom,
• ways in which BSD drivers were reused in your project,
• concerns about porting Java,
• Gallium3D port progress reports...

The format of the talks can vary, from 45min large speech to 15 min general project presentation, or hand-on hacking session.

Proposals

Proposals should be sent to François Revol by mail: revol AT free DOT fr

Your proposal should include:

• duration (in 15 minute blocks -- please stick with that granularity, as it will make the schedule somewhat easier to follow for visitors),
• activity title (please try to be descriptive, there are ~250 talks at FOSDEM during the week-end ;)),
• a short abstract (1-2 paragraphs),
• a longer description if appropriate,
• optionally a list of links to the project website or similar
• for each speaker:
  • the speaker's real name,
  • a short overview of her bio in a couple of lines,
  • optionally also a longer bio,
  • optionally a picture (please send it to us as 128x128 PNG),
  • optionally links to her website, blog, ...

Plain-text format is preferred by the FOSDEM team, it makes their life easier, something like:

John Doe
john.doe@example.org

John is currently working as a freelancer and spends most of his free
time contributing to various opensource projects, most prominently on
libjohndoe.

John currently lives in England with his wife, 2 kids and a bunch of
kitten. He loves spending his time walking around in the woods, and
of course kitten. He has a masters degree in kitten science, which
helps him a lot with coding.

blog: http://johndoe.example.org/blog/
attached: john_doe.png

Deadline

The deadline for submissions is 2009-12-25, please try to stick to it. Acceptance notification on 2009-12-31.

Organization

The room provided by the FOSDEM team has:

• room number AW1.105 with 48 seats,
• a video projector with VGA cable,
• wireless internet.

We will try to provide a wifi router with ethernet ports for demonstrations since we know many projects do not have functional wifi drivers yet. We will also try to provide a laptop to load your slides on if you can't use your own machine.

It is advised to see with your project supporting associations for possible reimbursement of travel and hosting cost, since the FOSDEM team cannot help there. Attendance is free however. Also remember to check other devroom calls as well as the ​call for lightning talks, for subjects that might not fit our topics of interest.

Projected schedule

9:00	Welcome (15min)
9:15	"Rosetta OS" project
morning	project presentations, design...
afternoon	more projects, workshops...
16:45	Closing (15min)