Call For Participation Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom at FOSDEM 2026 CONFERENCE DATES: Saturday & Sunday 31 January - 1 February, 2026 in person in Brussels, Belgium DEVROOM DATE: Saturday 31 January 2026 CfP DEADLINE: Sunday 7 December 2025 at 23:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth) SPEAKERS NOTIFIED: Friday 12 December 2025 FINALIZED SCHEDULE: Sunday 19 December 2025 The Legal and Policy DevRoom invites hackers, developers, contributors, lawyers, and decision-makers alike to share their knowledge with the community. We invite you to contribute to our DevRoom by submitting proposals for 25 or 50 minutes talks or panels about FOSS-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 DevRoom, please do not hesitate to contact us at <fosdem-legal-policy at faif.us> You can respond to this CfP by going to: https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2026/cfp on or before December 7, 2025. Look at past talks in our DevRoom for inspiration: https://archive.fosdem.org/2025/schedule/track/legal-and-policy/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2024/schedule/track/legal/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2023/schedule/track/legal_and_policy_issues/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/track/legal_and_policy_issues/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2021/schedule/track/legal_and_policy_issues/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2020/schedule/track/legal_and_policy_issues/ 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 * 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 2025, I hereby 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 2025 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