This forum thread will be used to document conversations about partnerships that we have with other organizations and communities. These could be one-off meetings, or outcomes that come out of our presence at events.
Please refer to the threads from 2024 and 2025 for more context.
Notes from our participation at FOSDEM 2026 are here
We had a talk (slides here) and a stand at FOSSASIA 2026. Our presence was centered mainly around FLOSS/fund advocacy and finding projects that could apply (there is not much to talk about FOSS United at international events, except for maybe IndiaFOSS - so all positive conversations there are a bonus!)
Here are some notes and updates from the event -
FLOSS/fund
VLC is aware of the fund and has been discussing about it internally. It might take some time for them to apply. IndiaFOSS 2026 is on their radar already, and they will most likely be attending.
Caught up with the Matrix folks. We’ve invited them to IndiaFOSS as well - they are interested in setting up a Matrix room for the conference.
I also met the CEO of Rust Foundation. They will have a discussion about FLOSS/fund internally, but are interested in the fundingjson experiment (highlighting FOSS funding requirements). Rust seems to be doing well in terms of fundraising, and I had a lot of questions on how they’ve gone about it. We will try to have a longer chat with them. I highly recommend checking out their talk on strategy in open source.
Also had FLOSS/fund related conversations with GNOME foundation, Debian, and other projects that were showcasing.
FOSS United
Linux Professional Institute (LPI) will be showcasing at Open Source India in November this year. They don’t have enough people on the ground and asked if FOSS United would like to co-exhibit at their stand. Should be very interesting; we’ve never had any presence at this event. Looks unlikely for them to attend IndiaFOSS, but we talked about the possibility of hosting some educational events during their trip to India.
One of the most interesting conversations was with Saad Chinoy, who’s based out of SG and runs multiple makerspaces there, and has done a lot of work in making Open hardware projects for disabled people. I had invited them to IndiaFOSS last year as well, but it looks much more likely because of the next point.
Met the people behind Gathering for Open Science Hardware. Saad and Marc (who also runs Hackteria - which was started out of BLR!) are the organisers of GOSH 2026, happening in Kathmandu, just the next weekend after IndiaFOSS. The timelines are perfect for us to become a co-organiser of the event, and help them promote it. They will most likely showcase at IndiaFOSS. We discussed ways that FOSS United can be of help. They were also super hearing about MOSAIC. Lots of fun work that we can do together, including hosting GOSH 27 in India.
Forklore conversations. Met several Indian maintainers ( Aurora store, mifos initiative).
Long chat with a FOSDEM organiser. I gave them context about our activities at the FOSDEM stand they don’t seem to have a problem with us showcasing other projects at our stand.
Grafana will return as IndiaFOSS sponsors and I asked them to consider going for a higher tier this time, with a booth. They were impressed by the event last year! They asked if there’s anything we can do together with the Grafana learning platform, and that they’d be happy to sponsor educational events that make use of this.
Lastly, I met Daniel Blueman(Numascale, and wifi.one). He wants to attend IndiaFOSS this year and help us with the wifi situation. He’s happy to bring hardware and help us setup our networking infra, and also just monitor the situation and tell us how we can improve things.
Update: Expenses were around 50k INR, including travel and stay.