[bureado]

What do you mean by "commercial, in your face"?

I mostly attend open source/tech conferences in the Americas. I think I know what you mean, but that's not the main difference I see between FOSDEM and those conferences.

There's still "commercial" at FOSDEM (plenty of sales pitches in sessions, to begin with) but I think what's strikingly different is that FOSDEM has no "agenda", that is, the event isn't crafted around a theme and said theme doesn't dictate the rest of the content and the discussion.