Making people love FOSS: a case study at KU Leuven
By Bert Van de Poel

ULYSSIS, Unix Lovers Yield Student Services and Internet Support, is a student organisation at KU Leuven. Since our foundation in 1994, both ideological and practical reasons have made ULYSSIS the de facto FOSS organisation at our university. While the internet grew with more social media, more Oracles, more Microsofts and a lot more dull consultancy firms, students seemed to lose their interest in FOSS as a concept. As our university's curriculum no longer features the ethics of licenses, we have tried to take over to save souls! We found that the principles of FOSS by itself aren't convincing enough during an intermezzo of a 2 hour workshop, so we moved on to greater things.

Now, several years after we've steadily and subconsciously moved on to other ways of promoting FOSS, ULYSSIS organises several workshops every year on FOSS tools that make life easier, tries to publish as much of its generally useful software as copyleft and data as open data, tries to use only FOSS tools in house (even for design work), and happily organizes a CTF and an open source job fair.

By setting a good example, and showing students the practical benefits of good licenses early on, we have managed to change perception of a growing minority at KU Leuven. Something to be proud of, and that could do with copying and improving at other universities around the world. So feel free to fork!