Open Source Gatherings Still Rock in 2026

This past Wednesday, a handful of us from the Kitchener-Waterloo Linux Users Group (KWLUG) gathered for one of our monthly social meetups. This month’s meetup was also part of LibreLocal, a Free Software Foundation initiative that promotes local free software communities.

Unlike our regular KWLUG presentation nights hosted at the University of Waterloo, these dinners are intentionally informal. No laptop. No projector. No slide deck. No scheduled talks. Just food, conversation, and whatever topics naturally emerge once a table full of Linux and open source enthusiasts settles in for the evening.

This month’s gathering included (from left to right) Anton, Mark, Mikalai, Andrew, and myself… with Colin taking the photo (who attempted to escape without appearing in one himself, but failed). Note the lack of UNIX beards (this is a Linux group after all!).

The discussion wandered across just about every topic you might expect from a room full of technically opinionated people: Linux distributions, Systemd, Wayland, AI tooling, running local AI models, how Azure sucks, writing efficient software, open hardware, drones, privacy, politics, self-hosting, digital sovereignty, and the future of the web.

But we also spent a lot of time discussing why local technical communities still matter. After all, KWLUG has been one of the most vibrant LUGs in existence, going strong for nearly 3 decades (partly due to amazing leadership by Paul and Andrew). We live in an era where so much interaction happens through isolating online platforms, yet there’s still enormous value in sitting around a table with curious people and talking for hours about technology and open source. Open source has always been about more than code repositories, licenses, and philosophy. It’s about shared knowledge, mentorship, collaboration, humour, and friendship, and that human side of technology is easy to forget.

The MOST interesting thing about free and open source software in 2026 is that many of the ideas the community fought for decades ago have now become mainstream conversations again, and made even more relevant by modern technology, geopolitics, and AI (or as we say in Canada, “EhI”):

• transparency (can we trust it? can we audit it?),
• interoperability (and the risks of over-centralization),
• ownership (who owns the data? who owns the infrastructure?),
• digital autonomy and privacy,
• benefits and dangers of decentralization,
• and resistance to vendor lock-in.

Local Linux user groups may seem old-fashioned compared to Discord servers or Reddit threads (we still use a massive mailing list!), but there’s something uniquely valuable about in-person communities. You can disagree passionately about editors, init systems, package managers, or the philosophical implications of AI, and then immediately laugh about it over dinner. And after many long-winded conversations and reminiscence, everyone eventually arrived at the following revelation (in Mikalai’s vernacular): There are two centers in this world: the place where you are from, and Kitchener-Waterloo.

After all, this is Canada’s Silicon Valley… the place where strange technical magic keeps happening. You can even buy the Lord Kitchener shirt:

Thanks to KWLUG, LibreLocal, and everyone who came out for another evening of open source conversation, philosophical derailments, technical arguments, and camaraderie. As AI becomes increasingly centralized and resource-intensive, there are few better places to discuss the implications for ownership, transparency, software freedom, and local control than with Linux nerds at a dinner table.