This year, we had the privilege of participating in FOSDEM for the first time. This offered us an opportunity to engage with the open source community at the conference, share our insights, and learn from the vast pool of knowledge that FOSDEM brings together.

![Photo of OpenSSL FOSDEM 2024 attendees] (/images/blog/FOSDEM_24.jpg)

FOSDEM, short for Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting, is an event that brings together thousands of open source developers, enthusiasts, and professionals from around the world. It’s a festival of knowledge, with workshops, talks, and sessions covering a myriad of topics from software development and security to hardware innovation and beyond.

For OpenSSL, going to FOSDEM gave us the unique opportunity to meet face-to-face with individuals from the varied open source community and share experiences, challenges, and solutions in the realm of open source.

One of the highlights of our participation was the stand we hosted at FOSDEM this year. To celebrate our 25th anniversary we handed out over 300 T-Shirts at FOSDEM. We wanted to give a token to express our gratitude to the incredible open source community that has supported the project throughout the years.

As our mission and values states “We believe in the principles of open source software, not only for its inherent values but also for the transparency and accountability it provides to our security and privacy tools.” Our participation at FOSDEM has reinforced our values and we look forward to continuing our journey in the world of open source.