Open Source Walk in Bangkok, Thailand - FOSSASIA Summit 2026

This is my fourth time attending the FOSSASIA Summit, one of Asia’s largest open source technology summits.

For the past three years, I had a topic to present every year. This year, for the first time, I moderated two sessions, so I was more relaxed at the conference and could enjoy the community-style technical conference.

Regular program: Group photo

Every year at FOSSASIA, a regular feature is the group photo of all attendees. Many familiar faces from the Asian open-source community participate; try to spot someone you recognize...

Mitch Altman's sharp speech

The most memorable speech on the first morning was by Mitch Altman. He started by making fun of the error messages given by AI, and the first half of his speech used a lighthearted and humorous approach to illustrate how AI drafts content, satirizing the dangers of AI overheating. The second half was the core: Open and Trust, much like Richard Stallman's initial concept of free software and the later open-source movement, the core idea of ​​which is freedom.

Keynote: Hardware Freedom in an AI-Dominated World: How to use AI as a Tool (Instead of Becoming a Tool)

Finally, a call to action for engineers: Be the Architect, Not the User.

It's about taking control of AI, not being controlled by it.

An annual "date" with old friends

Having attended FOSSASIA for four consecutive years, I've met old friends from the open-source community at the conference every year. Since we're in different cities, it feels like an annual "date."

Indian brother Aayush Gupta

It was great to see Aayush Gupta again, an open-source engineer. We first met in Singapore in 2023. At that time, I was working on AO.space, focusing on privacy. Aayush Gupta shared their open-source project, CalyxOS, an Android system that protects personal privacy. Then it was in Vietnam in 2024, and this year in Thailand. I'm glad to know he's now living in Taiwan and learning Chinese. I look forward to chatting with him about Chinese culture next time 😃.

This is Aayush's personal website, feel free to follow.

Friends from COSCUP in Taiwan

What a fun coincidence was meeting my friends from the open-source COSCUP in Taiwan again this time. We first met back in 2023 when Aayush was still in India. I never expected to run into him at the COSCUP booth this year; fate is truly amazing.

I was pleasantly surprised to receive a gift, a "Kuai Kuai" snack. It was also my first time learning about "Kuai Kuai culture" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuai_Kuai_culture): placing "Kuai Kuai" snacks next to machinery makes it work properly. It's so interesting! As soon as I got home, I put "Kuai Kuai" next to my personal server. By the way, my server has been running continuously for 308 days and is still very stable and reliable.

Peter Membrey, currently in Hong Kong

Another friend who surprised me was Peter Membrey from ExpressVPN. I almost didn't recognize him when he first came on stage; we first met at FOSSASIA 2023 Singapore.

His keynote speech this year was "Protecting Children Online: What Role Can Open Source Play?," which is also an area I'm very interested in. Later, we chatted in the audience about managing children's phone use. An engineer who is also a parent said he lets his child use a feature phone—the old-fashioned candybar phone—and then replace it when the child is older. That's not a bad method.

Because I've been working on an AI + Privacy project recently, I contacted him to discuss the challenges in this area further. He happened to give a presentation Open Sourcing Secure GPU Workloads in Enclaves: A Practical Framework for Privacy-Preserving Compute, which was incredibly insightful. Appreciate it so much!

Kim from Germany

I also ran into Kim from Germany again, whom I met in Thailand last year. We knew each other before because of his open-source project, Matrix, a decentralized social communication platform, whose philosophy is very similar to AO.space, which I founded. This year, we talked about the impact of Vibe Coding and AI on engineers. Unlike in China and the US, he shared that in Germany, more engineers are more cautious about using AI and are less enthusiastic about current technologies like OpenClaw, placing greater emphasis on security.

Friends from China

This year's conference features several familiar open-source communities from China: openEuler、openKylin、OpenFDE、DeepComputing。

The keynote speaker from the openEuler community was Guo Hanjun, a kernel expert and maintainer of the ARM64 ACPI upstream of the Linux kernel. The keynote speaker from the openKylin community was Dr. Yang. The two speakers' presentations were as follows:

openEuler-based Open Source Stack: Powering the AI Era Forward

openKylin: Architecting the Al-Native OS

Interestingly, the keynote speeches from the two operating system communities coincidentally focused on AI + OS. AI is a current technological trend and has clearly become, and already is, an essential infrastructure. This reminds me of something my mentor once said: an operating system is the historical accumulation of software functionality.

There was also a presentation from Mr. Wu Nan from the OpenFDE community. From an architectural perspective, OpenFDE's integration of AOSP and Linux is a fantastic design, allowing Android applications to run directly on the Linux desktop.

Fusing AOSP and Linux！ To Open a New Chapter for Linux Desktops

RISC-V also attracted significant attention at FOSSASIA, with Mitch Altman mentioning it in his presentation. Members of DeepComputing were also present at the exhibition area to introduce the latest developments in RISC-V.

During the summit, I also had a lively conversation with Wu Wei, a pioneer in RISC-V in China, and Felix Yan, a leading figure in Arch Linux, discussing the past, present, and future.

Overall impression

The conference was held a little over two weeks ago, right when the OpenClaw (Raising lobsters in Chinese) was taking off in China. However, compared to the "frenzy" in China, this summit, while also discussing AI, was more cautious and pragmatic, lacking the emotional, impulsive atmosphere of some conferences. During the discussions, it was clear that engineers in the open-source community weren't particularly enthusiastic. Although everyone knew about OpenClaw, most didn't plan or continue to use it. Some cited security concerns, while others felt it was useless.

From my perspective, I wouldn't recommend using OpenClaw for non-professionals. Aside from feeding the platform data and paying for tokens, it's essentially useless. It's better to spend the energy trying out more professional AI tools to improve work efficiency than feeding OpenClaw. However, I believe everyone will eventually have a personal AI assistant, which is one of the reasons I initially created AO.space. I'll share more about this direction later.

Looking back on this summit, there were many interesting moments and interactions. The VLC hats we see every year, the game controller designed for special needs that can be played with one hand, the two Thai children cycling nearly 100 kilometers with their father, and the Mapconductor open-source project from our Japanese friends.

When you calm down, put down your phone, and observe your surroundings, you can better appreciate the beauty and opportunities of the real world. We look forward to seeing you at future FOSSASIA and other open-source technology summits!

Glimpses of the event

Author's Note:

• The original article was entirely written by the author, without the use of AI or AI editing. This approach is especially valuable in today's world.

• Articles in different languages ​​will be translated using translation tools based on the original text, and each sentence will be verified.

Reference

• [1]: FOSSASIA Summit 2026