FOSDEM 2027 – The M-Ecosystem Devroom: Call for Participation

Different projects. Shared roots. One M-Ecosystem.

We are pleased to announce the Call for Participation (CfP) for the M-Ecosystem Devroom at FOSDEM 2027, taking place on Sunday, January 31, 2027, in Brussels, Belgium.

Following the tradition of the MariaDB, MySQL & Friends Devroom, we are opening a new chapter that brings together an even broader community of developers, contributors, maintainers, DBAs, and open-source enthusiasts.

Whether you’re working on MySQL, MariaDB, Percona Server, VillageSQL, AliSQL, or any of the tools, connectors, storage engines, and projects surrounding them, this devroom is for you!

The ecosystem has evolved, diversified, and expanded over the years. Different projects have followed different paths, introduced their own innovations, and sometimes approached the same technical challenges in very different ways.

We believe that bringing these experiences together is a fantastic opportunity to learn from each other.

And what better place to do that than FOSDEM?

Key dates

October 27, 2026: Call for Participation opened
November 29, 2026: Submission deadline (Brussels time, CET)
December 7, 2026: Selected talks and schedule announced, or earlier
January 30–31, 2027: FOSDEM 2027
Sunday, January 31, 2027: M-Ecosystem Devroom

Submit your proposal: https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2027/cfp

When submitting, make sure to select “The M-ecosystem” as your track.

What is the M-Ecosystem Devroom?

The M-Ecosystem Devroom builds on the long history of the MySQL and MariaDB communities at FOSDEM.

Over the years, these communities have shared more than code. They share protocols, tools, applications, users, and many of the same technical challenges (and Community Dinners).

Today, this ecosystem includes multiple database implementations, such as MariaDB, MySQL, Percona Server for MySQL, Percona Server for MariaDB, VillageSQL, and AliSQL, alongside a rich collection of independent projects.

It is not just about database servers.

Storage engines, connectors, replication technologies, proxies, backup utilities, monitoring solutions, development tools, and many other components play an essential role in making this ecosystem successful.

The M-Ecosystem Devroom aims to provide a neutral and welcoming technical space where all these projects can share knowledge and experiences.

We particularly encourage presentations that highlight collaboration, interoperability, or lessons that could benefit more than one project.

However, your talk doesn’t need to cover multiple database implementations to be relevant. Deep technical work on a single project is equally welcome.

The important thing is that your contribution brings technical value to the wider open-source community.

What topics are we looking for?

We welcome technical presentations on all aspects of the M-Ecosystem.

The following list is not exhaustive, but should help you understand the type of content we’d love to see.

Database development and internals

Query optimizers, execution plans, and query processing
Storage engines and their architectures
Indexing strategies and new data structures
SQL language features and compatibility
Database internals, memory management, and concurrency
Performance improvements, regressions, and debugging
Extensibility, plugins, components, and user-defined functions

Replication, clustering, and high availability

Replication architectures and protocols
High availability, failover, and disaster recovery
Distributed and clustered database solutions
Replication compatibility between implementations
Lessons learned from production incidents
Consistency, reliability, and data integrity

Development, operations, and tooling

Database connectors, drivers, and client libraries
Proxies, routing, and connection management
Backup, restore, and migration tools
Observability, monitoring, and diagnostics
Performance benchmarking and workload analysis
Testing frameworks, continuous integration, and quality assurance
Deployment automation, containers, and infrastructure as code

Security and reliability

Authentication, authorization, and access control
Encryption and data protection
Security improvements and vulnerability management
Database hardening and auditing
Testing, fuzzing, and reliability engineering

New workloads and emerging technologies

Vector search and AI-related database workloads
Analytical queries and hybrid transactional/analytical processing
JSON, document-oriented, and other specialized data
Database extensibility for emerging use cases
Integrations with other open-source data processing systems

Cross-project collaboration and interoperability

This is an area we’re particularly interested in.

Examples include:

How different database implementations solve similar problems
Protocol compatibility and its challenges
Migration between database implementations
Shared tools and technologies
Interoperability between different components
Architectural choices and their trade-offs
Opportunities for collaboration between open-source projects

Have you implemented something interesting? Fixed a difficult bug? Discovered unexpected behavior? Built a useful tool? Compared two approaches? We’d love to hear about it!

And don’t be afraid to share something that didn’t work.

Failed experiments, unexpected results, and lessons learned can be just as valuable as successful implementations.

What makes a good proposal?

FOSDEM is a conference organized by and for the free and open-source software community.

We’re looking for technical content, real experiences, and knowledge sharing.

A good proposal should clearly explain what you intend to present, why it matters, and what attendees can expect to learn.

We particularly appreciate presentations that include:

Technical explanations and implementation details
Real code, examples, or demonstrations
Architectural decisions and their consequences
Performance measurements and reproducible results
Practical experiences and lessons learned
Challenges encountered and how they were addressed

We welcome proposals from experienced speakers, first-time presenters, independent developers, students, researchers, and contributors to projects of any size.

You don’t need to represent a company or a major open-source project to submit a talk.

If you’ve done something interesting and you’re willing to share it, please submit!

What we’re not looking for

Marketing presentations, sales pitches, and commercial product demonstrations without substantial open-source technical content are not appropriate for this devroom.

Proposals focused exclusively on proprietary or closed-source technologies will not be accepted.

Please also avoid submitting the same proposal to several FOSDEM tracks.

Remember the spirit of FOSDEM: hackier is better! 😉

Practical information

General details

Date: Sunday, January 31, 2027
Location: ULB Solbosch Campus, Brussels, Belgium
Language: English
Talk duration: Approximately 20 minutes
Format: In-person technical presentations
Admission: Free, with no registration required for attendees

Please keep your proposal focused enough to fit into the available presentation time.

All presentations must comply with the FOSDEM Code of Conduct and the conference’s free and open-source software principles.

Devroom presentations will be recorded and streamed. Recordings and presentation materials will be published under FOSDEM’s CC-BY licensing conditions.

How to submit your talk

Visit the official FOSDEM 2027 submission platform:

https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2027/cfp

Create an account if necessary, or reuse your existing Pretalx account.

Your proposal should include:

A descriptive title: Make it clear what your talk is about.
A short abstract: Summarize the subject and what attendees will learn.
A detailed description: Explain the technical content, intended audience, and key takeaways.
Relevant references: Links to open-source repositories, documentation, articles, or related projects, where applicable.
Speaker information: Introduce yourself and your involvement with the topic.

Make sure to select “The M-ecosystem” as the track when submitting.

You may submit more than one distinct proposal, but please be reasonable about the number of submissions.

The deadline is November 29, 2026.

Selection process

All proposals will be reviewed by the devroom selection committee, which will consider their technical relevance, quality, originality, and potential interest to the community.

We’ll aim to build a balanced schedule representing the diversity of projects, contributors, and technical subjects across the ecosystem.

As the number of available slots is limited, we unfortunately won’t be able to accept every proposal.

For accepted talks

If your proposal is selected, you’ll receive further information through the conference submission system.

Please make sure your speaker profile and contact details are up to date.

Speakers are expected to attend in person, respect the allocated presentation time, and follow the FOSDEM guidelines.

For proposals that are not selected

If your proposal isn’t selected, please don’t be discouraged.

The available time is limited, and not being selected doesn’t necessarily reflect the quality of your work.

We encourage you to continue sharing your contributions through the different community events and other opportunities throughout the year.

About FOSDEM

FOSDEM is one of the largest gatherings of free and open-source software developers in Europe.

Every year, thousands of contributors meet in Brussels to share ideas, present their work, exchange experiences, and collaborate across projects.

FOSDEM is free to attend and organized by volunteers.

FOSDEM 2027: https://fosdem.org/2027/
Submission platform: https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2027/cfp
Code of Conduct: https://fosdem.org/2027/practical/conduct/

See you in Brussels!

The M-Ecosystem has always been about more than a single database server.

It’s about the developers who contribute code, the maintainers who keep projects alive, the DBAs who run these systems every day, and the communities that continue pushing the technology forward.

We may not always agree on implementation choices, architecture, or even the direction a project should take.

And that’s perfectly fine.

Different approaches are an opportunity to learn from each other.

We hope the M-Ecosystem Devroom will encourage new conversations, strengthen existing connections, and perhaps even inspire new collaborations.

So, whether you’re developing a database engine, building a connector, experimenting with a new storage engine, maintaining an open-source tool, or simply working on something interesting in this ecosystem, we want to hear from you.

Submit your talk before November 29, 2026, and join us on January 31, 2027, in Brussels!

Different projects. Shared roots. One M-Ecosystem.

See you at FOSDEM 2027!