Events on Planet Grep

Since its initial incarnation, Planet Grep has carried the feed of FOSDEM, the Open Source event in Belgium.

Since I'm doing this, other people have asked me to carry the feed of their particular open source-event, too. In the past, I've been reluctant to do so, going so far as to consider removing the FOSDEM feed again.

The reason for this is that I want Planet Grep to be a community site; reading Planet Grep should be an easy way to figure out what lives in the Belgian FLOSS community. This becomes harder if it becomes too much of an advertisement site for event organizers rather than a user blog website.

But yesterday, I realized that community-organized events are part of the community, too, and thus it shouldn't be too strange to carry those as well. So I've decided that feeds from event organizers are welcome on Planet Grep, too, provided the event:

• Is a community-event. "Community" is defined as "non-profit, and entrance is free". Sponsorship is okay, but it shouldn't be an event hosted by a particular company to market its newest bit of software, even if it's a piece of software under a FLOSS license.
• Is about FLOSS, and FLOSS alone. Not "we're doing a Database-event, and two of our fifteen speakers are from FLOSS databases".
• Will happen in Belgium. It's okay if it's a travelling event that just happens to be in Belgium for this year, but we won't carry T-DOSE, for example (even if/when that event becomes popular in Belgium).

I've been considering to require that events should be about Open Source in general rather than just about one particular piece of software, but I won't add that restriction for now. I might revisit that bit in the future, however.

As another event that would fit the above set of guidelines, we'll be adding Loadays to Planet Grep shortly.