We’re excited to announce the new Cloud Native Databases devroom for FOSDEM 2025. The purpose of this devroom is to discuss developing databases that are designed to take advantage of the cloud native architecture in order to meet the demands of modern applications. 


Over the past decade, there have been many open source communities that developed distributed SQL databases to provide scalability, cost efficiency and manageability in the cloud. However, there is still work to be done for on-going challenges such as network latency and security.


Instead of focusing on a single technology or community, our goal is to bring open source database communities and developers together to share their experience, learn from their work, and foster collaboration on challenges ahead.  


Suggested Topics

Since this is the first time we’re organizing our devroom, we don’t have examples from past FOSDEM that we can point to. However, here are some suggestions. 


  • Evolution of new database architecture for cloud native environments (e.g., to address  scalability, elasticity, reliability) 

  • How to ease/streamline database migration (especially from legacy databases)

  • Security and compliance for cloud native databases

  • Cloud cost optimization for users

  • Achieving database upgrades without downtime

  • How to benchmark and tune distributed databases

  • Query optimization for cloud native databases

  • Tools/methodologies for monitoring, observability, testing, etc.

  • Working with streaming data

  • Stories from end-users (both successes and failures) 

  • State of open-source licenses and database communities

  • Emerging trends/use cases


These are just ideas and we encourage you to be creative with your proposals!

A few Notes: 

  • You must be available in person to present your talk at FOSDEM.  

  • Speaking slots are 25 minutes in length (including Q&A) with 5 minutes between sessions. 

  • FOSDEM is a FLOSS community event, so please ensure your topic is appropriate (i.e., no sales pitches).


Important Dates


  • CFP submission deadline: 1 December, 2024 (at ~23:55 Brussels time)

  • Devroom schedule announced: 15 December, 2024

  • Devroom takes place: 1 February, 2025 (in the afternoon) 


To Submit


Go to the FOSDEM 2025 Pretalx website to submit your talks and select “Cloud Native Databases” in the Track dropdown menu. Submissions on Pretalx will be open by 30 October.